
Glassy V-'ao 6 6 

Book i-thi. 

Copyright W. . 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Some By- Products 
of Missions 



ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND, Ph. D., 

Author of "Court Life in China," "China's New Day, 

"Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes," "The Chinese 

Boy and Girl," "The Young China 

Hunters," etc., etc. 



CINCINNATI : .JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



rV- 



^ 



^V 



COPYRIGHT, 1912, 
BY JENNINGS AND GRAHAM. 



£CI.A312102 



PREFACE 

Some three or four years ago I began speaking 
on the influence of missions as a factor in the 
civilization of the world, holding that outside 
of all religious considerations missions had 
justified themselves by their influence in the 
government, the education, the science, the 
health, the wealth, and the trade of the world. 
Persons who were interested in the method of 
the presentation of the subject were still in- 
clined at times to say, ' ' But this is not mission 
work. ' ' 

I was willing to admit that it was not, and 
yet I insisted that it was a product of mission 
work. In traveling about the country I was 
taken to visit various great enterprises, and 
was shown their products, but was told that a 
larger proportion of their income was a result 
of their by-products than of their direct prod- 
ucts, and it one day popped into my head that 
all these things that I had been thinking of as 
the products of missions were in reality but 



4 PREFACE 

by-products. The products of missions are re- 
generated human beings, while all these other 
things are simply by-products, consciously or 
unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the result 
of mission work. 

There are those of my friends who have 
thought that I gave the gospel too much credit 
for our Western — I will not say Christian — 
civilization. That it is the result of Greek and 
Eoman pre-Christian forces, all of which I have 
considered in my thinking, and have accorded 
them their place; but I believe that, after all 
credit is given to all other influences, it is still 
the power of regeneration, the method of ob- 
taining which Jesus Christ communicated to 
His followers, that best accounts for it all. 

I have called the book "Some By-products 
of Missions ' ' because I have only touched upon 
a few of the great subjects that might be 
treated under this head. Dr. Barton, from 
whom I have quoted in several of my chapters, 
published a few months ago an interesting se- 
ries of articles in the Misisonary Herald, under 
the title "By-Products of Foreign Missions." 
In these he treated of "Industrial Advance," 
"New Social Order," "Blunted Sense of Ke- 



PREFACE 5 

sponsibility, " ''Co-operation and Unity," 
"Modern Medicine in the East," "A New Com- 
merce, " " Modern Education, ' ' etc., all of which, 
and many others, might properly be taken up 
under this head. May I not hope that many of 
my readers will take up other lines of thought 
and call the attention of the people to the di- 
rect as well as the indirect influences of Chris- 
tianity in the development of all phases of mod- 
ern progress? 

I make no apology for publishing the book, 
as I have been asked by the publishers to write 
it, and repeatedly urged the past two years to 
put my thoughts into print. The chapters as 
they stand were given to the theological depart- 
ment of Boston University, and my only hope 
is that they may be as kindly received by the 
public as they were by the students. 

I. T. H. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

I. An Age of By-Products, . . .11 

II. By-Products in Government, . 15 

III. By-Products in Trade, . . .25 

IV. By-Products in Science, . . 35 
V. By-Products in Civilization, . . 47 

VI. A Genuine: Product, ... 64 

VII. By-Products in Civic Life, . . 85 

VIII. Lack of Christian Influence, . 96 

IX. The Religions of China, . . 107 

X. By-Products in Intellectual De- 
velopment, .... 123 

XI. Need of Moral and Religious Edu- 
cation, 135 

XII. By-Products in Music, . . 158 

XIII. By-Products in Art, . . . 171 

XIV. By-Products in Reflex Influence, 193 
XV. The Gospel and the World's Peace, 211 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

XVI. By-Products in Individual Devel- 
opment, 224 

XVII. Products and By-Products, . 243 

XVIII. Products and By-Products, . . 260 

XIX. By-Products in Exploration, . 279 

XX. By-Products in Language and Lit- 
erature, 301 

XXI. By-Products in Non-Christian 

Systems, 312 



Some By- Products of Missions 



CHAPTER I 
AN AGE OF BY-PBODUCTS 

The present is an age of by-products. On every 
hand, instead of the small dealer of a few dec- 
ades past, we see great business firms, combi- 
nations, trusts, utilizing for personal wealth 
and public good every scrap of material that 
was formerly thrown away as worse than use- 
less by private individuals. 

I recently visited a great sawmill. I found 
a man on a platform on the riverside, with a 
long pole, tipped with a hook, in his hand, with 
which he was guiding great logs to an inclined 
plane. Here they were caught by a moving 
chain, carried to the second story of the build- 
ing, where they were dumped by a piece of ma- 
chinery onto another inclined plane. They 
rolled down to a truck, where they were 
fastened by two men with jacks, and were shot 
back and forth with a piston past a belt-saw 
with teeth on both sides. As it moved forward, 
a board was taken off; as it came back, an- 
other board was taken off, and a log twenty feet 



12 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

long and twenty-one inches in diameter was 
sawed into boards in one and three-quarters to 
two minutes' time. 

Every scrap of wood was used either for 
lath, for slats, for scantling, or for fuel, while 
the sawdust was made into wood-alcohol, and 
the exhaust steam was carried over to a salt 
factory next door and made to run machinery 
enough to enable six men to make five hundred 
barrels of salt a day worth ninety-five cents a 
barrel. 

The Chinese have a sawmill. This is noth- 
ing more nor less than two men, a file, and a 
big buck-saw. One end of the log is elevated 
by placing it across another piece of timber, 
and while one man stands on the log the other 
stands beneath, blinking his eyes to keep the 
sawdust out; and what the American sawmill 
makes into boards in two minutes the Chinese 
sawmill does in from two to three days' time. 

What is true of the sawmill is equally true 
of the packing house. I was in "Wichita, Kan., 
recently. The mayor of the city said to me 
one Saturday morning: 

"How would you like to visit the Cudahy 
packing factory this afternoon?" 



AN AGE OF BY-PRODUCTS 13 

"Delighted," I answered. I had been born 
on a farm, and I remembered distinctly how, 
as a boy, my father and brothers, with a neigh- 
bor or two, nsed to spend one day preparing 
to bntcher. The next day they killed eight or 
nine hogs, and the following day they spent 
"cleaning up." 

The mayor called for me in his anto abont 
one o'clock Saturday afternoon. We were 
taken at once to the rear of the factory, where 
the hogs were driven into a little pen. A man 
hooked a chain to one leg of each of the animals 
and the other end of the chain to a large wheel. 
With the revolving of the wheel the hog was 
raised from the floor and dropped from the 
wheel to a moving trolley. It was stnck by the 
first man it came to, and the blood was caught 
and nsed. It passed through a boiling vat, was 
scraped by machinery, and the hair saved and 
utilized. 

As the body passed along the line of men, 
about thirty in all, one man slit it down the 
front; another disemboweled it, tossing the en- 
trails into a trough, where they were examined 
by Government inspectors to see if the animal 
was healthy. A third man took off the head; 



14 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

a fourth slit it down the back; a fifth cut it in 
halves with a single stroke of a cleaver; and 
when it reached the end of the line it was car- 
ried away in pieces to the shelves. Everything 
about the hog : hoofs, hair, entrails, blood, even 
to the contents of the stomach and bowels, were 
used — everything, I was told, except the squeal ; 
and there were men there with moving-picture 
machines and phonographs, catching the move- 
ments and the squeal, which they proposed to 
sell in their nickelodeons. And I was assured 
the largest profits of the packing houses come 
not from the meat, but from the by-products. 
The by-products of Standard oil are greater 
and more numerous, perhaps, than of any other 
single kind of business. To enumerate them 
would be tiresome. Among them, however, 
there are several that are of paramount impor- 
tance. The pipe-line, as a method of transpor- 
tation, is a by-product of Standard oil from 
which she derives one of her largest incomes. 
Analine dies are another, and the world had 
to wait for a good automobile and a flying ma- 
chine until Standard oil produced gasoline in 
such quantities and at such prices as would 
justify its use as fuel. 



CHAPTEE II 

BY-PRODUCTS IN GOVERNMENT 

In the last chapter of Matthew, the last three 
verses, during one of His final conversations 
with His disciples, Jesus Christ says, "All 
power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. " 
That is one of the most tremendous claims that 
any living being could make. Moses would not 
have dared to utter such a sentence. David 
could not. Paul could not. Caesar, Alexander, 
Napoleon would not have dared to make a state- 
ment of that kind — no one that has ever lived 
but Jesus Christ would dare to say, "All power 
is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. ' ' 

But is it true? That is a fair question. As 
to whether all power in heaven is given unto 
Him we need have no concern here ; we propose 
to confine ourself more particularly to the ques- 
tion as to whether all power on earth is given 
unto Jesus Christ. 

His next word to His disciples was to "go 
... > . and teach all nations." The disciples 
went. And it might be of interest to those who 

15 



16 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

have the time and disposition to do so to find 
out which of the disciples went the farthest. If 
asked, I have no doubt most of us would an- 
swer, Paul. But if we will study the First 
Epistle of Peter we will find that it is written 
to the Churches scattered throughout Pontus, 
Galatia, Capadocia, Asia, and Bythnia; 
Churches which were established by Paul and 
Silas, all of which Peter had probably visited 
with Silas and Mark. The letter, we will find 
by referring to the last verses of the book, was 
written from Babylon (or Rome), and was car- 
ried by Sylvanus (Silas). We find Peter 
preaching in Samaria, Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, 
Antioch ; and Paul tells the Corinthians that he 
could lead around a wife or a sister as well as 
Cephas or Barnabas — indicating that Peter 
had been at Corinth. Peter was probably cru- 
cified at Rome; in other words, we find Peter 
in all the places Paul had been. 

A similar study of the Seven Churches to 
which John wrote, together with his banishment 
and death, will show that John was almost as 
great a traveler as Peter and Paul. The men 
who heeded this command to the letter, and 
went the farthest, are the greatest of the 



BY-PRODUCTS IN GOVERNMENT 17 

Twelve. They are not greatest, perhaps, be- 
cause they heeded this command, but because 
they were the greatest they were big enough to 
grasp Jesus' meaning. 

As I have indicated above, the disciples went 
according to the last command of Jesus Christ. 
They went to Italy, and Italy became a power. 
They or their successors in mission work went 
on to Spain, and Spain became a power. They 
went to Portugal, and Portugal became a power. 
And Italy, Spain, and Portugal were the polit- 
ical powers of the Middle Ages and the Eenais- 
sance. It was they who discovered China and 
revealed her to Europe. It was they who also 
discovered America and revealed her to the 
world. It was they who first rounded Cape 
Horn. It was they who first rounded the Cape 
of Good Hope; indeed, it was they who made 
the first tour around the world. 

But they did not give the Bible to all the 
people — they gave it to the priests, who in turn 
interpreted it to the people, and thus they 
reached a certain stage of development, where 
they stopped, as all countries have done that 
have not given the Bible to all the people, mak- 
ing each individual responsible both to God and 

2 



18 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

man for his own conduct. Witness the Roman 
Catholic countries of Europe, of South Amer- 
ica, and Mexico — not one of them stands in the 
front rank among the nations of the world as 
first-class political powers. 

Luther went down to Italy; he returned to 
Germany, translated the Bible into the German 
language, gave it to all the German people, 
and Germany became a power. It was taken 
to England, given to all the English people, and 
England became a power. It was brought over 
to America, placed in the hands of all the Amer- 
ican people, with liberty to study it at will, and 
America became a power; and Germany, Eng- 
land, and America are the three political pow- 
ers of the world to-day. It is worthy of note 
too that England and America are giving more 
than six times as much toward foreign missions 
as all the rest of the Protestant world combined. 

All political power, since the coming of 
Jesus Christ into the world and the establish- 
ment of Christianity, has been and still is in 
the hands of the man and the country with the 
Bible ; and hence Jesus Christ might have said, 
All political power is given unto Me. 

I realize how dangerous it is to attempt to 



BY-PRODUCTS IN GOVERNMENT 19 

give in so few sentences a summary of the po- 
litical power of the world. I realize that there 
are those who, not being Christians themselves, 
will recall the temporary Mohammedan upris- 
ing with the Moorish supremacy of the Dark 
Ages, and the Mongol invasion of Europe. In 
spite of all this, however, I am ready to risk 
the statement that the political power of the 
world as it stands to-day is the result of the 
gospel of Jesus Christ, though I realize, as I 
shall show hereafter, that all the governments 
are going counter to that gospel. 

It may be urged by some that, while such 
remarkable transformations might have, been 
brought about in the political conditions of the 
world in early times, they would be impossible 
in this age. To all such I answer: 

Fifty years ago Japan was a closed land. 
I am not disposed to deny that Japan had a 
civilization of her own, nor am I disposed to 
deny that among a people of her own kind she 
had a certain sort of political power; but the 
ease with which her doors were opened by Com- 
modore Perry is the best evidence that it was 
not of the same character as that which she 
wields to-day. 



20 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Japan had had Confucianism, Buddhism, 
and Shintoism for fifteen hundred years, and 
she slept ; but with fifty years of the preaching 
and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and 
the introduction of the by-products of that 
same gospel, Japan is awake and has become 
a power — and such a power that the nations of 
Europe dare not discuss any questions concern- 
ing the Orient without consulting Japan. 

It would be interesting here to note the 
progress that Japan has made in all phases of 
social, political, commercial, and educational 
life. How the sexes mingled promiscuously 
naked in the public bath and in the home ; how 
the government almost at a single bound leaped 
from the feudalism of the Middle Ages to the 
constitutional monarchy of the present time; 
how in a half century, from a few junks trading 
from port to port, or with China, she has taken 
a place next to Great Britain as a sea-faring 
pjeople, and with great banking houses and com- 
mercial establishments not only throughout her 
own empire, but throughout the world; how 
from an inability to resist ten small ships under 
the command of Commodore Perry she has 
within a period of ten years destroyed the fleets 



BY-PRODUCTS IN GOVERNMENT 21 

of two great empires ; how her army has been 
transformed from incompetent soldiers armed 
with swords and pikes and chain armor of the 
Middle Ages into a multitude of troops that 
commanded the admiration of the allied armies 
of the world during the Boxer War, and whose 
mothers ordered them, when they went to fight 
with Russia, to come back either a victor or a 
corpse ; and how, finally, her few schools teach- 
ing the Confucian classics have been developed 
into a great public-school system, with high 
schools, colleges, and universities scattered 
throughout the whole empire. So that the Jap- 
anese have been the first people to prove that 
a whole nation may obtain an education along 
new lines during the lifetime of a single indi- 
vidual. 

And now I challenge you to study the his- 
tory of her educational development and see if 
the first schools were not established by the 
missionaries, if her first government schools 
were not under the conduct of men who went 
to Japan as missionaries, and if the first schools 
established by educated natives were not 
opened as Christian schools by men who had 
been assisted by Christian people abroad. 



9& SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS, 

If there are those who are disposed to insist 
that trade had most to do with the making of 
the new Japan, let me call their attention to 
the fact that Japan had been trading regularly 
with the Dutch since 1611— three hundred years 
and more. And these Dutch traders had been 
promised by the Japanese Shogun that ''they 
in all places, countries and islands under mine 
obedience, may traffic and build homes service- 
able and needful for their trade and mer- 
chandises, where they may trade without any 
hindrance at their pleasure, as well in time to 
come as for the present, so that no man may 
do them any wrong. And I will maintain and 
defend them as mine own subjects.' ' They 
were there for their own personal and private 
ends, and when these were secured they were 
satisfied. It was not till a man went with a 
free Bible, a free school, and a free and efficient 
system of medicine which would bring relief 
from pain, with the object of doing good to 
the people, that the new regime was brought 
about. 

Turn now to the greater empire of China. 
One hundred years ago the Protestant gospel, 
which represents regeneration and a free Bible, 



BY-PRODUCTS IX GOVERNMENT 23 

was taken to the Chinese. China had had Tao- 
ism for twenty-four hundred years, Confucian- 
ism twenty-three hundred years, Buddhism 
eighteen hundred years, and Mohammedanism 
twelve hundred years, and she made but tardy 
progress. But with one hundred years of the 
teaching and preaching of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ, and the circulation of a free Bible 
among the people, China is awake and is mak- 
ing more rapid progress than has ever been 
made by any nation of similar population or 
dimensions at any time in the history of the 
world. 

"When I went to China, a little more than 
twenty years ago, there was just one school 
opened by the Chinese Government teaching 
foreign learning, and that was opened and pre- 
sided over by a man who went to China as a 
missionary, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, though there 
were numerous missionary schools, colleges, 
and universities scattered throughout the em- 
pire. And it is worthy of note that the first 
six colleges and universities established by the 
Chinese Government were opened and presided 
over by five men who went to China as mis- 
sionaries: the Tung Wen Kuan and the Pe- 



24 [SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

king Imperial University by Dr. W. A. P. Mar- 
tin, the Tientsin University by Dr. C. D. Ten- 
ney, the Shantung University by Dr. "W. M. 
Hayes, the Nan Yang College by Dr. John C. 
Ferguson, and the Shansi University by Dr. 
Timothy Eichards; while the first attempt at 
a public-school system was also established by 
Dr. Tenney in the metropolitan province of 
Chihli, and a scheme for a similar one drawn 
up for the Shantung Province by Dr. Hayes. 
One school teaching foreign learning opened by 
the government twenty years ago, while at the 
present time there are more than forty thou- 
sand schools, colleges, and universities opened 
by the Chinese Government and engaged in 
teaching the learning of the West. 

All political poiver has been given to Jesus 
Christ. I am not trying to interpret the pas- 
sage of Scripture with which I began this chap- 
ter, but such is the verdict of the world nine- 
teen hundred years after that sentence was ut- 
tered by the Master. 



CHAPTER m 

BY-PRODUCTS IN TRADE 

Last winter I was invited to deliver a lecture 

in the parlors of Mr. B in Riverdale on 

the Hudson. Ton know it is a lecture when 
yon get a hundred dollars for it, a talk when 
you give it at a missionary meeting, and a ser- 
mon when you preach it on Sunday. Well, that 
was a lecture. I learned that evening on my 

way to Mr. B 's home that his salary is the 

same as that of the President of the United 
States, though he is only vice-president of a 
great life insurance company. I learned also 
that if Adam had put $100,000 in a bank the 
year he was created, and had continued to de- 
posit $100,000 a year every year from that time 
until 1912 without getting any interest on it, 
he would not have as much money in the hank 
to-day as this insurance company has assets. 
Wealth, wealth, wealth! It is impossible for 
me to say how many millions of dollars were 
represented by that audience. 



26 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

At the close of the lecture Mr. P , the 

partner of Mr. M ■, came up and shook 

hands with me and expressed the pleasure he 
had had in listening to what I had to say. I 
was told that evening that on one occasion Mr. 

P went down to see Mr. M . They 

transacted some big piece of business, at the 

conclusion of which Mr. M said, "P , 

what are you getting a year now?" 

"Oh, I 'm getting a fair living." 

"You are getting $50,000 a year; are you 
not?" 

"Yes." 

"Well, I 'm reserving this desk for you." 

"What do you mean?" 

"I 'm reserving this desk for you in my 
office. When you are ready to come and take 
this desk I have $250,000 a year for you." 

Mr. P took that position, and gave it 

up a year later for something bigger. 

When he expressed the pleasure he had had 
in listening to what I had said, I answered : 

"Mr. P , I like to talk to men who are 

doing big things, and it is no mere compliment 
to you to say you are doing big things. Have 
I overstated the bigness of the gospel or the 
importance of Christian missions?" 



BY-PRODUCTS IN TRADE 27 

' ' No ; I do n 't think you have, ' ' he answered. 
"Christian missions have always been the fore- 
runners of trade." 

There is your business man; he sees mis- 
sions from the standpoint of trade; and it is 
not too much to say that the missionary is the 
unsalaried drummer for the commerce of the 
world. 

"But, Mr. P ,-" I urged, "is not trade 

itself a development of Christian missions?" 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Have you ever seen a Chinese junk or a 
Japanese junk or a Hindoo junk or an African 
junk in an American port?" 

"No; I do not think I have." 

"Well, what junks are carrying the trade 
of the world?" 

"Why, of course, the vessels made in Chris- 
tian countries." 

' ' What men have developed the trade of the 
world? Was it the Chinese, the Japanese, the 
Hindoos, or the Africans?" 

"No; of course not. It was the men in 
Christian countries." 

"Now, Mr. P , how do you explain the 

fact that the men in Christian countries devel- 
oped the trade of the world, and the vessels 



28 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

made in Christian countries are carrying the 
trade of the world, if it is not first or last a 
result of the gospel and Christian missions ?" 

"I had not thought of it in that way," he 
answered. "It does look as if it were." 

"Another thing, Mr. P ," I continued; 

"God says that 'the cattle on a thousand hills 
are all Mine, the silver and the gold is all 
Mine. , Now, if the silver and gold is all God's, 
the coal in the earth is God's too." 

"Yes," he answered; "there is no violation 
of logic about that." 

"Well, I come from Pennsylvania, and that 
State is underlaid with coal, and we are making 
scores of millionaires from the coal they are 
taking out of the earth. That is God's coal and 
God's money. 

"Then," I continued, "if the coal in the 
earth is God's, the gas — I mean the natural gas 
—is also God's. But we are making scores of 
millionaires from the natural gas they are tak- 
ing out of the earth. 

"Then, further, if the coal and gas are 
God's, the oil in the earth is also God's. But, 
can you think of Standard Oil without coupling 
it in your thought with multi-millionaires?" 



BY-PRODUCTS IN TRADE 29 

"No," lie answered; "I always think of 
Standard Oil and mnlti-millionaires at the same 
time." 

So do I; don't you? 

One of the Standard Oil men told me that 
when they first began taking the oil ont of the 
earth there were people who complained that 
they had no right to do so ; that God had hid- 
den this oil deep down in the earth to blow np 
the world when he got ready to do so, and they 
were robbing God. Now, this may not be very 
good reasoning or very good sense, bnt they 
tacitly admit that it is God's oil. 

I often go to the Duquesne Club, when I am 
in Pittsburgh, for my luncheons (one man had 
the temerity to ask me at a laymen's mission- 
ary convention who paid for those luncheons). 
There I see multi-millionaires going about like 
so many school boys — made from the iron they 
have taken out of the earth. 

I have just been for a trip up through Mon- 
tana, where we have our copper kings; and 
down through California, where we have our 
gold kings ; and out in Colorado, where we have 
our silver kings ; and then in South Africa we 
have our diamond kings. But those diamonds 



30 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and that gold and silver and copper and iron 
and coal and gas and oil might have remained 
buried deep down in the earth for another mil- 
lion years if a gospel-developed man had not 
gone to take them out, for I challenge my read- 
ers to find anywhere in the world a single mil- 
lionaire — not to say multi-millionaire— made in 
any non-Christian country in the world from 
any of those things which God hid away in the 
earth and says ' ' are Mine. ' ' He has given His 
wealth to the man to whom He has given the 
gospel; for the wealth of the world is in the 
hands of the gospel-developed man. And in the 
light of the twentieth century Jesus Christ 
might have said, "All the power of wealth has 
been given unto Me, and I have given it unto 
you." 

And we exclaim, "Why, Master, hast 
Thou given it unto us?" 

And we seem to hear His answer echoing 
down through the centuries in the form of His 
last great commfesion: 

"Go, teach all nations." 

"Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature." 

"Ye shall be witnesses unto Me to the utter- 
most parts of the earth." 



BY-PRODUCTS IN TRADE 31 

I have given you the wealth; I have given 
you the power; I have given you the intelli- 
gence ; I have given you the conveyances. GO ! 

There are four great sources of wealth: 
mining, agriculture, stock-raising, and getting 
control of the forces of nature; and I think I 
would be safe in challenging my readers to find 
a single millionaire made in any non- Christian 
country from any one of these four sources. 
There are millionaires in China. Li Hung- 
chang was said to be one; but his money was 
invested in pawn-shops, and his wealth was 
made by preying on the poor. There are mil- 
lionaires in India ; but their wealth, as in China, 
will be found to be the result of taxation of the 
poor. • 

"When Mr. P said that ''Christian mis- 
sions have always been the forerunners of 
trade," I could not but feel that I was in a 
position to give him pointers on missions and 
trade. 

"When I went to China twenty years ago 
we could not get a bag of American flour in all 
that empire. When I left Peking I saw piled 
up on the bund in Tientsin stacks of American 
flour thirty feet high, a hundred feet deep, and 
a quarter of a mile along the bund, and I said 



32 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS] 

to myself, "The great wlieat-raisers of our 
Northwest could afford to pay all the expenses 
of all the missions in China — educational, evan- 
gelistic, and medical — for the business that has 
come to them." Standard Oil could afford to 
do the same. When I went to China we could 
not get a can of oil except by having it shipped 
from San Francisco or Chicago. Now Stand- 
ard Oil is the light of Asia. They burn it in 
their lamps ; they burn it in their small stoves ; 
they cook their food with it. They dip their 
water and make their tea and wash their dishes 
and sweep up their dust in utensils made from 
Standard Oil tins. Nay, they even roof their 
houses with Standard Oil tins; indeed, in all 
kinds of domestic uses the Standard Oil tin ri- 
vals, and in many cases supplants, the omni- 
present bamboo. 

And what shall we say of the Singer sewing 
machine? That company will testify that the 
first sewing machines that they sent to the non- 
Christian world were carried by the missiona- 
ries. The natives watched them with open 
mouth as well as open eyes. They began buy- 
ing them themselves, and now we see their ad- 
vertisements in all the native papers. We see 



BY-PRODUCTS IN TRADE 33 

them pasted on their walls; we see them in 
their shops and in their homes, and hear them 
singing as we pass along the streets. And I 
can not look at the tower of the great Singer 
Building as I enter the harbor at New York 
without saying to myself, "I helped to build 
that tower," for I was one of the unsalaried 
drummers that helped to open up one of the 
largest markets in the world to the Singer sew- 
ing machine. 

Men, I speak to you now. If you want to 
talk business, the biggest investment this world 
has is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has done 
more toward the development of man and more 
toward the development of the world than any 
other one force. And next to the gospel is the 
men who carry the gospel. No greater mistake 
can be made by shortsighted, narrow-minded, 
selfish business men than to suppose that mis- 
sions interfere with business. They promote 
trade. The only business that missions would 
interfere with, if they could, would be the ship- 
ping of such intoxicants as injure the health 
and character of the natives. And the time will 
come, if it is not even now upon us, when every 
highminded business man of vision and fore- 

3 



34 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

sight will do all in his power to further mis- 
sions, even though his motive be nothing higher 
than to promote his own business. 

Indeed, if I were asked to state what would 
be the best form of advertising for the great 
American Steel Trust or Standard Oil or the 
Baldwin Locomotive Works (for we took 
twenty-seven Baldwin locomotives out of the 
hold of one steamer in China) or the Singer 
sewing machine, or any one of a dozen other 
great business concerns, I should say, Take up 
the support of one or two or a dozen mission 
stations, an educational institution, a hospital, 
a dispensary, or a hundred native preachers or 
teachers. Every one thus helped would be, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, a drummer for your 
goods, and the great Church they represent at 
home would be your advertising agents. 



CHAPTER IY 

BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE. 

As the missionaries went in obedience to the 
last command of the Master to teach all na- 
tions, they began establishing schools. They 
were monasteries and nunneries in old Roman 
Catholic times : they are colleges and universi- 
ties to-day; and it was from the educational ef- 
forts of these early churchmen that have 
sprung all the great universities of early 
Europe. 

"With the advent of Protestantism the mis- 
sionaries continued to go and to teach, and Ox- 
ford and Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and Prince- 
ton, and a multitude of other colleges, are the 
result of gifts from men who were stimulated 
with the thought that, "religion, morality, and 
knowledge being necessary to good government 
and the happiness of mankind, schools and the 
means of education shall forever be encour- 
aged,' ' an ordinance which they promulgated 
in 1787. 

They began taking the young people into 

35 



36 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

their schools and teaching them, and then be- 
gan to develop a new power in the world — the 
power of the intellect, the power of the reason, 
the power of invention, and the disposition to 
experiment. 

These young people seriously undertook the 
study of nature and her laws. They soon dis- 
covered some of the powers of nature. They 
then began making their thoughts into ma- 
chines (what is a locomotive or a trolley car 
but a thought made into a machine, with a 
power of nature — the expansive power of water 
or electricity— hitched to it?), and then these 
powers of nature pulled them over land and 
sea, and a similar power swishes them through 
the air. 

Scientists tell us that our civilization is the 
result of our science; and I answer, Yes, 
largely. But our science is a result of our gos- 
pel; and hence all our civilization is only a 
synonym for the gospel of Jesus Christ — a by- 
product of the gospel. Trace this thought out 
to a last analysis, and we have a railroad train, 
a trolley car, a telegraph, a telephone, a phono- 
graph, a watch in your pocket, a filling in your 
tooth, glasses on your eyes, and all the great 



BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE 37 

machinery-filled mills which it has required 
thought to produce, and thought and intelli- 
gence to operate. There is no reason to believe 
that we would have had any of these things to 
the degree we have them now but for the inspi- 
ration and intelligence that has been furnished 
by the gospel, and the Church and schools which 
are the embodiment of the Word of God. 

It is worthy of note that, while the non- 
Christian peoples studied the stars, they never 
made an astronomy. I know what the ancient 
Greeks did in astronomy ; how they constructed 
a theory (the Ptolemaic) which misled the 
world for fifteen hundred years. I know what 
Pythagoras did, and how nearly he came to the 
Copernican explanation of the solar system; 
but the science of astronomy as it stands to-day 
has been made by the Christian peoples. The 
Chinese predicted an eclipse more than seven 
hundred years B. C, and many of the facts of 
astronomy were stumbled upon by the Oriental 
peoples. They have written books upon the 
stars and the planets; but the facts of astron- 
omy were never observed, collected, and classi- 
fied in anything like a scientific way by any non- 
Christian people. 



38 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

The non-Christian peoples have studied the 
rocks; but they have never made a geology. 
They have written books upon rocks and pre- 
cious stones. They have opened mines of gold, 
silver, copper, iron, and indeed all kinds of 
metals. They have polished diamonds, rubies, 
jade, and all kinds of precious stones. They 
have worked crystals into goblets and snuff- 
bottles ; but the classification of all the facts of 
the strata of the earth and their contents was 
left as a task for the man with a Bible. 

The non-Christian peoples have likewise 
studied the flowers ; but they have never made 
a botany. They have written thousands of 
books about the flowers ; but they have failed to 
make the slightest observation as to their struc- 
ture. One day while engaged in translating a 
botany with an old Chinese graduate scholar, I 
mentioned the parts of the flower, to which we 
had just come in our work. 

' 'What do you mean?" he asked. 

"I mean the structure of the flower, the 
regularity or irregularity of sepals, petals, 
stamens, and pistils," I explained. 

"Wo pu ming pai" (I do not understand), 
he urged. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE 39 

I went to the window, pulled two or three 
flowers, and pointed out what I meant. 

With staring eyes and mouth agape he ejac- 
ulated : 

"Wo mei lie hui" (I never observed that). 

Again, the non-Christian peoples have writ- 
ten books upon the human system; but they 
have never made a physiology, a science of med- 
icine, a science of dentistry, a science of optics 
— nor, indeed, any science. Every science, nat- 
ural and applied, that the world has to-day, has 
been made by the man that has been developed 
by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Observe that I 
do not say: by a man who believes in Jesus 
Christ and His gospel. There are many men 
who have been developed in Christian schools, 
or in schools originally established by Christian 
men, who seem to think it an evidence of big- 
ness or broadness to focus their minds upon 
an eTri, and try to pick to pieces the shell from 
which they were hatched. There are many 
other men also — men of great intellectual 
power and thought and of correspondingly 
small spiritual power and faith — whose time 
has been so taken up in the development of their 
thinking powers and their observation of things 



40 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

that they have had no time for the cultivation 
of their moral and spiritual faculties and the 
observation and classification of moral and 
spiritual facts and phenomena. They have done 
much for the advance of science ; but they are 
the product of a Christian civilization, and but 
for the gospel and the educational system de- 
veloped by the man with the Bible, we are quite 
safe in saying they never would have been. 

Observe, further, that we did not say that 
all scientific facts have been observed by the 
man with the Bible. This would not be true. 
All the great peoples who have established 
great civilizations of ancient or modern times 
have been familiar with some, if not all, of the 
first principles of physics — the lever, the wheel 
and axle, the inclined plane, the pulley or the 
screw. Without these the Egyptians could 
never have built the pyramids or erected their 
great temples, tombs, or monuments. Without 
some observation of the facts of astronomy 
they would not have erected them with refer- 
ence to the points of the compass as they did. 
But with the exception of the ancient Greeks 
and the Moors, we find no non-Christian peo- 
ples classifying their observations of laws or 



BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE 41 

things in anything like a scientific way. The 
ancient Greeks approximated this in enclid, 
astronomy, and logic, and the Moors made con- 
siderable progress in mathematics and astron- 
omy; but these three sciences, with all other 
sciences, stand to-day as a by-product of the 
civilization developed by the gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

I suppose it will be admitted that the Chi- 
nese is the oldest and greatest non-Christian 
civilization that the world has ever developed. 
It has risen higher, has lasted longer, and has 
exerted a wider influence over more men and 
women than the civilization of any other pagan 
people. Moreover, the Chinese are a very prac- 
tical people, having stumbled upon the mari- 
ner's compass eleven hundred years B. C, gun- 
powder some two hundred years B. C, the prin- 
ciple used in the pipe-organ two thousand to 
three thousand years B. C, printing five hun- 
dred years before Guttenberg, while they have 
made for themselves all the practical utensils 
of life. Their alchemists began experimenting 
in their search for the elixir of life some two 
or three centuries before the Christian era; 
some of them had an explosion, and it was thus 



42 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

they stumbled upon gunpowder. But while 
they are a very practical people, they have 
never made an ounce of good gunpowder dur- 
ing their whole history. Although they discov- 
ered the mariner's compass some three thou- 
sand years ago, they have never made a good 
compass up to the present time; and although 
they antedated Guttenberg five hundred years 
in the discovery of printing, their Peking Ga- 
zette was both the oldest and worst-printed 
newspaper in the world. 

These alchemists developed a system of sci- 
ence which we shall have occasion to mention 
further on in speaking of the Taoist religion. 
Their system, however, we will describe here. 
It is called Feng Shua; feng meaning wind, and 
shua meaning water, while the system itself 
controls or explains the fortune or misfortune 
— in a word, the luck — of all places and people. 
The scientists are the soothsayers, and it is im- 
possible to locate a house, a well, a city, or a 
cemetery without first consulting these mouth- 
pieces of nature. Let me give an illustration 
or two which will do more to make Feng shit a 
clear than a whole volume of abstract explana- 
tion. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE 43 

There is at Tung-chou, fifteen miles east of 
Peking, a pagoda thirteen stories high, weigh- 
ing an indefinite thousand of tons. I once in- 
quired of a native why this pagoda. He ex- 
plained that formerly in that locality there was 
a shaking of the earth. A soothsayer was con- 
sulted concerning this phenomena. He ex- 
plained that in that locality there was buried 
deep down in the earth a dragon, and that every 
time it winked its eye it caused a shaking of 
the earth. They further inquired as to how 
to get rid of this quaking of the earth ; to which 
he answered, " Build something heavy enough 
on the eye of the dragon, so that he can not 
wink ; ' ' and my friend continued, ' ' we built the 
pagoda, and he has never winked since. ,, 

At the north side of every cemetery there 
is a great mound of earth, unless it be located 
with reference to some mountain-peak, as are 
some west of Peking, or in some amphitheater 
of a mountain-chain like the tombs of the Ming 
dynasty near the great wall north of Peking, 
to protect the bodies of the departed from the 
bleak winds of the north. In the center of the 
capital itself is a great mound, or hill, made 
from the earth secured in the excavation of the 



44 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

artificial lotus lakes of the Forbidden City. 
This mound, called Coal Hill, is placed imme- 
diately north of the palace buildings for the 
purpose of protecting the court. An elevation 
north of a man's house, however, is as liable 
to bring ill as to protect him, as was well illus- 
trated in close contiguity to our mission in Pe- 
king. 

There was a huang tax tze (a yellow girdle 
man), a distant relative of the royal family, 
lived in a small Chinese house just across the 
street to the south of our mission compound 
in Peking. He had five daughters and no sons. 
— a calamity in a Chinese home, where a girl 
can do nothing toward the support of the fam- 
ily, and a boy is necessary to the perpetuation 
of the worship of the ancestors. This worried 
the old man, and he called in a soothsayer to 
inquire the cause of this misfortune. 

The soothsayer went all about the premises, 
looking wise and muttering incoherent and un- 
intelligible formulas, but could find nothing 
that would account for the condition. The 
house was properly located — if it had not been, 
some other soothsayer would have been at fault. 
But as he came out to the front gate and looked 



BY-PRODUCTS IN SCIENCE 45 

across the street, he discovered that we had 
built a chimney a foot and half above the top 
of a small Chinese house; and he exclaimed, "It 
is that foreign devil's chimney that has spoiled 
the feng shua of your place, and you will never 
have anything but girls as long as that chimney 
6tands. ' ' 

The old man donned his silk garments and 
his hat — a Chinese never wears a hat except 
on important occasions— and came over to con- 
sult with the members of the mission. He 
talked for an hour about everything except that 
which concerned him most — a Chinese has no 
idea of the flight of time ; tempus does not fugit 
with him — and finally came to our chimney, 
how it had spoiled the feng shua of his place, 
and would not the honorable pastor kindly tear 
it down to a level with the roof of the house and 
restore the luck of his home. 

We wanted to live in peace and harmony 
with our neighbors, and so we tore the chimney 
down to the level of the roof of the house — and 
his next two babies were boys. That is science 
in the greatest non-Christian nation the world 
has ever developed. We must admit that it 
worked — at least something worked, in that 



46 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

case ; but how would you like to be governed by 
that style of thinking? 

Again the verdict of the world at the be- 
ginning of the twentieth century is that all sci- 
entific power has been given unto Jesus Christ. 






CHAPTER V 

BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 

I was talking with a business man in New York 
recently about missions and the Church, and 
religious affairs in general; and in the course 
of the conversation he ejaculated : 

1 ' The trouble with you preachers, Headland, 
is that you don't preach a practical enough 



"What do you mean?" I asked. 

1 'Well," he continued, "you tell us about 
being saved some time, somewhere" — ■ 

"Pardon me," I interrupted; "but to be 
saved some time, somewhere, will be the most 
important thing in time or in eternity to you 
and me. It will, my friend; I happen to know 
that, for I have had one foot in the grave for 
the space of two months, and I think it gives 
one a different view of life to have been for 
eight or nine weeks in sight of eternity." 

"Oh, yes, I know what you mean," he con- 

47 



48 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

tinned; "but we business men want something 
that takes hold right now." 

"We have it," I answered. 

"What?" he inquired. 

"The gospel." 

"What do you mean?" 

"You have a filling in your tooth," I an- 
swered. 

"Yes; what has that got to do with it?" he 



"Why, your tooth is saved by the gospel," 
I replied. 

1 ' What do you mean ? " he asked, with some 
surprise. 

"I mean to say," I replied, that you can not 
find a dentist anywhere in the non-Christian 
world that can fill and save a decaying tooth. 
Now, that is a practical enough gospel, isn't 
it?" 

"Is that true?" he asked. 

"It is," I replied; and then I continued, 
"Look here; do you pay your preacher, when 
he comes to see you, the same as you pay your 
dentist when you go to see him?" I had him 
there. 

"No; of course I do not," he answered. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 49 

"You are not quite honest," I replied. 

"Well," lie answered, trying to excuse him- 
self, "you see, when a fellow gets a toothache 
he will give almost anything to get rid of it." 

And I answered, "0 God, give us a soul- 
ache, a heartache for the world!" That is 
what we want. We are so concerned about our 
own little aches and pains, and our own com- 
forts and luxuries, that we forget, if we ever 
knew, the great throbbing, pulsating heart of 
the other half, or the dull, blind ache of the 
dark, drear millions who have been left through 
all these centuries without any knowledge of 
that great big gospel that brings us liberty, 
fraternity, government, educational systems, 
knowledge, science, health ; for, I continued : 

"If you can not find a dentist to fill a de- 
caying tooth, you could hardly hope to find a 
surgeon who could set a broken arm or limb, 
or prescribe intelligently for a diseased stom- 
ach or a system of aching nerves." 

"Well, scarcely," he answered, laconically. 

"You will be interested in the following 
story," I continued : "One of the court painters 
came to me one day in Peking. He was having 
trouble with his throat. I inquired about the 



50 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

difficulty, and he told me he had been eating 
fish in the palace a few days before, and had 
gotten a fishbone stuck in his throat. 

" 'Couldn't any one take it out for you?' 
I inquired. 

" 'No,' he answered, 'one of the court phy- 
sicians gave me medicine to dissolve the bone; 
but it did not dissolve. I wonder if one of your 
physicians could remove it.' 

"I took him over to Dr. Hopkins, one of 
God's noblemen, a man who can preach and 
teach as well as heal, who lived only two doors 
from me. The doctor had him sit down in front 
of the window, open his mouth; he looked into 
his throat, saw a little red spot, took a pair 
of tweezers and pulled the fishbone out," 

As simple a surgical operation as that the 
court physician in the greatest non-Christian 
country the world has ever developed could not 
perform! What, then, about the setting of a 
broken arm or a broken limb! 

Long ago the Chinese discovered the supe- 
riority of Western medicine over their own 
antiquated system, and when they began their 
great reform measures of 1898, one of the first 
things they did was to introduce a regular med- 
ical department into their great colleges and 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 51 

universities. And when the North China Edu- 
cational Union began to build their medical 
school in Peking, besides the officials of the 
capital subscribing liberally, the empress dow- 
ager herself gave nine thousand dollars toward 
the erection of the building; and when it was 
dedicated she sent her nephew, Prince Chiin, 
the present regent, father of the emperor, to be 
present at the dedication. The regent was also 
present at the dedication of the Methodist Hos- 
pital and has shown a particular interest in all 
phases of educational and medical work in and 
about the capital. 

And well he might, for another incident that 
occurred in Peking will reveal another phase of 
Chinese medicine. 

One day one of the leading portrait painters 
of China came to call on me. He was not feel- 
ing well, and when I inquired the nature of the 
malady he simply answered, "Tu tze pu hao;" 
a polite translation of which would be that his 
stomach was out of order. He did not ask for 
treatment nor request an interview with the 
doctor. I returned his call less than a week 
thereafter. "When I called at his studio and in- 
quired about him, his pupils said, 

"He is dead." 



52 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"How is that?" I inquired. "He called on 
me less than a week since." 

"Yes," they answered; "but he has been 
ailing for some time, and one of the men in the 
shop or store across the way said that he had 
a prescription which would exactly suit his 
style of sickness." 

' ' Was the man a physician ? " I inquired. 

"No," they replied; "just a clerk in the 
store. ' ' 

"And what did he prescribe?" 

"He told our teacher to swallow a large 
green grasshopper," they answered; "about 
that large," putting the end of the thumb 
against the middle of the index finger. 

"And what happened?" I asked. 

"He swallowed the grasshopper and died 
within a few hours." 

Now, my wife, who is a physician, tells me 
"that grasshopper ought not to have killed 
him," and my only answer is a counter-ques- 
tion: 

"Isn't it pretty difficult to say what a live 
grasshopper in a weak stomach might do for 
a sick man? All that I know about the matter 
is that he swallowed the grasshopper and died 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 53 

within a few hours, and his wife sued the man 
in the shop for having killed her husband. ' ' 

And so I said to my friend with the filling 
in his tooth: 

1 ' That is medicine and surgery in the great- 
est non-Christian country in the world. How 
would you like to live in a country with no bet- 
ter religion and no more science than that? 
Now, my theory is that it is the gospel that has 
contributed to the production of all- our sci- 
ence.'' 

"Yes, I have heard you say that before; but 
I do not believe it. I think it is the white man. ' ' 
Ajid so do you, my dear reader. 

""Will you be good enough to tell me why 
you think it is the white man?" I asked. 

"Oh, that is easy. The white man is the 
most highly developed man. He 's the — the-- 
the best part of the human race." 

"I knew you believed that," I responded, 
"and I thought you would say it. You remind 
me of a conversation I had with a young man 
in a railroad train." And I related the follow- 
ing incident : 

I was going from Topeka, Kan., to Kansas 
City last winter on the railroad train. A hand- 



54 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

some young fellow about six feet tall, weighing, 
I should think, about one hundred and seventy- 
five or eighty pounds, entered the car and sat 
down beside me. He was well-groomed, neatly 
dressed, trim, clean, and intelligent-looking. 
Like everybody else, I have an unbounded ad- 
miration for handsome, big men. I should like 
to be big and handsome myself — not for my 
own sake, but just for the sake of my Master. 
A big, handsome man comes out on the rostrum, 
and the audience looks at him, and then, fold- 
ing their arms, they sink back among their 
cushions or in their seats and sigh to them- 
selves, "Well, he 's big enough to know some- 
thing.' ' Now, honestly, don't you? But a lit- 
tle man comes out on the rostrum, and he has 
to prove that he knows it before his audience 
will believe it. 

Now, if I had been in a Chinese railroad 
train, and such a person had sat down beside 
me, it would have been easy to have gotten ac- 
quainted. I should have turned to him, and 
with a polite bow Wen ta kuei lising, asked his 
honorable name. 

"My miserable name is Wang," he would 
have replied; "what is your honorable cog- 
nomen ? ' 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 55 

"My miserable name is He. Where are 
you going? and where did you come from? 
What are you going to do?" etc., etc., and we 
would have been acquainted. 

Now, in an American railroad train it is en- 
tirely different. A man comes and sits down 
beside you, and you half turn and squint at him 
out of the corner of your eye, and then 
straighten up in a sheepish sort of way, as 
though you had been trying to steal his pocket- 
book, instead of trying to steal a glance at him. 

I discovered in a round-about sort of way 
that this young man was traveling for a shoe 
house — traveling for a shoe house! Every 
great business firm in the country has its men 
out traveling for it, telling what it is doing, rep- 
resenting its wares. What the Church wants is 
that every one of its members will go out and 
be a drummer for the gospel. Too many of us 
seem to feel that when we have paid five or ten 
dollars toward the preacher's salary and fifty 
cents toward missions we have liquidated our 
obligation toward Jesus Christ. Money can not 
settle your spiritual obligations. Only service 
can pay your debt to the Church. 

If ever you start a conversation with a per- 



56 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

son in a railroad train, do not tell liim anything 
about yourself. He will get tired of you in 
two minutes. But a man will walk two miles 
with you to tell you all about himself. Why? 
Because you are interested in the other fellow. 
And the hungry heart of the world longs for 
the interest of his fellow-men. 

I talked to him for fifteen minutes about 
shoes — nothing but shoes. I was interested in 
the make of shoes, the quality of shoes, the sale 
of shoes, the prices of shoes — shoes. After we 
had talked for a quarter of an hour about shoes 
he became tired of it, It was shop to him; he 
wanted to know who this fellow is who is talk- 
ing shoes so vigorously. 

"My name is Headland, " I informed him. 
"I have been in China for twenty years, and 
am away behind the times in industrial pur- 
suits. I am on the Laymen's Missionary Move- 
ment." 

He drew in his breath. He looked at me as 
though I were a curio, and then he said, with 
perhaps more frankness than courtesy, remem- 
bering the interest I had taken in shoes: 

"You know I do not believe in foreign mis- 
sions." 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 57 

1 ' I did not know it," I replied. ' ' But would 
you mind telling me why you do not believe in 
foreign missions?" 

1 ' Yes, I '11 tell you why, ' ' he answered. ' ' If 
I had forty billions of dollars I could spend 
them all in the United States." 

"But would you do it?" I asked. 

"Well, that is another question," he an- 
swered. 

1 ' Suppose you did spend it all here, you still 
would not have all the people converted," I 
urged. 

"No, but as long as there is so much to do 
here at home I do not believe in sending so many 
men and so much money abroad," he insisted. 

"You believe in home missions, then?" I 
said, interrogatively. 

"Yes, I believe in home missions," he re- 
plied, not very enthusiastically. 

1 ' What particular phase of home missions ? ' ' 

"Oh, all kinds." 

"Would you mind telling me what particu- 
lar home mission enterprise you help to sup- 
port?" I inquired as innocently as I could. 

"Well," he replied, "I do not help any par- 
ticular kind." 



58 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Don't you suppose," I went on, "that 
there was just as much need of men and money 
in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria when 
Jesus Christ was preaching to His disciples as 
there is in Topeka and Kansas and the United 
States to-day?" 

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," he admitted. 

"Well, why do you suppose, when He only 
had a dozen trained men, and they did not 
have any money, His last words to them, in 
Acts 1:8, were to go "to the uttermost part 
of the earth?" 

He did not have any answer to that question, 
and I went on: 

"Let me ask you another question. Sup- 
pose those dozen disciples had believed just as 
you do, where would you and I have been to- 
day?" 

"Oh," he exclaimed, "the white man would 
have gone up anyhow!" 

"I beg your pardon," I urged, quietly. 
""When Jesus Christ was preaching to His dis- 
ciples in Western Asia your ancestors and mine 
were clothed in skins and living in mud-huts 
and caves in Europe, and if the disciples and 
their followers had said, 'There is no use of 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 59 

going to the ends of the earth while there is so 
much to do at home, instead of yon and I beau- 
tifully clothed"— and I looked him over crit- 
ically, from his brightly-polished shoes to his 
neatly-tied cravat and well-groomed head-^ 
"and luxuriously reposing among the cushions 
of a Pullman palace car in America, we might 
have been squatting on our haunches gnawing 
a bone among the unkempt, unbathed, half -clad 
members of our tribe in some cave in Europe." 

"I don't believe it," he interjected. "The 
white man would have risen in spite of every- 
thing." 

"Do you not suppose," I inquired, "that the 
white man has been upon the earth as long as 
the black man and the yellow man?" 

"Yes, I suppose he has," he admitted. 

"Then, how do you account for the fact that 
we made so little progress till after we got the 



"Is it true that we did make but little prog- 
ress?" he asked. 

"Let me put the question in another form. 
"Why did we not keep pace with the yellow 
man?" 

"Didn't we?" he asked. 



60 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

* ' By no means, ' ' I answered. ' ' We are told 
in English history that 'in the dense forests of 
the north and west (of Britain) roved groups 
of savage men, who shot a deer or snared a 
bustard when they wanted food, ate berries and 
leaves when game was not to be had, slept in 
caves or under trees, wherever the sun found 
them after the day's chase, and led, in short, a 
life which, in truth, took no thought for the 
morrow. A gigantic savage wrapped in deer- 
skin, his naked limbs stained deep blue with the 
juice of woad, his blue eyes darting lightning, 
and a storm of yellow hair tossing on his broad 
shoulders and mingling with the floating ends 
of his tangled moustache, has been the favorite 
portrait of the ancient Briton,'* as found in his 
native wilds. 

"Different, indeed, is the history of China. 
A thousand years before that time he had made 
a mariner's compass. Five hundred years pre- 
vious to this description of our British ances- 
tors Chinese literature had become so volumi- 
nous that he was forced to collect the best of it 
into an ecyclopedia which we call the Chinese 
classics. Two hundred years before the time 



* Collier's History of England, p. 11. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 61 

of this description of our British ancestors the 
Chinese had passed out of the age of feudalism, 
had built the Great Wall, and had united the 
whole country into one great government ; their 
first great history had been written, and curio 
collectors had begun to gather relics of ancient 
times. 

"Now, the question arises, how is it that 
the Chinese were so far ahead of our ancestors 
at the beginning of our present era, for they 
were undoubtedly a thousand years ahead of 
us when Jesus Christ was preaching in Galilee, 
and the only way I can account for it is that 
they had a better religion than we had. But 
whatever the reason may be, it remains a fact 
of history that we never made any progress 
worth while until we got the gospel. " 

He was cornered on the question of foreign 
missions. He knew it, and I knew it, but he was 
not willing to admit it ; and so he jumped right 
out of that corner into another corner, dodged 
the question, and started in on a new line. 

"You know, I don't believe in preachers; 
they are a lazy lot." 

I had heard that before, and I was prepared 
with an answer. 



62 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Do you mean to say," I asked, "that all 
the men that are traveling for your house are 
up to your average?" 

"Oh, I would not dare say," he answered. 

"Well, I would. They are not. There is 
not a house in the United States in which all 
the traveling men are up to your average. You 
are an exceptional man physically," I added, 
giving him a critical glance. "You are above 
the average intellectually, and from some of 
your remarks I judge you to be very good mor- 
ally. But will you pardon me if I say I do not 
think you are much religiously? You are, 
therefore, only about two-thirds developed; 
your intellectual third and your moral third. 
Now, in all kinds of business we have all grades 
of men. But will you pardon me if I say, in 
spite of your ideas of preachers, that the civi- 
lization of the world is more the result of the 
preachers of the gospel than of any other one 
class of men?' 

He did not have any answer to that. There 
is no answer to it except to admit it. It is a 
mistake to suppose, as some do, that Confucian- 
ism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism have re- 
tarded the development of the Asiatic peoples. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVILIZATION 63 

They have not. They have raised them to just 
as high a level as the system can raise them. 
No man nor any people ever rises above their 
religion. 

My friend had no answer to my remarks 
abont preachers, and so again he avoided the 
issue, and, knowing that I had been many years 
in China, he said: 

"Look here, I do not believe you can convert 
a Chinaman. " 

"Did you ever try it?" I asked. 

"No; I just judge by the looks of him," he 
answered. 

"I have been sixteen years in China," I re- 
marked. "That is not a very long time, but 
long enough to have learned something. I 
would like to tell you a story." And I told him 
the following: 



CHAPTER VI 

A GENUINE PEODUCT 

Many years ago there was a little boy working 
in a soap and candle store just across the city 
wall from our mission in Peking. 

One day he saw a missionary coming across 
the street with books in his hands, and he said 
to his associates: 

"Kuei tze lai liao — the foreign devil is com- 
ing." 

The missionary, who proved to be Dr. L. W. 
Pilcher, entered the store, put the books down 
on the counter, and asked: 

"Have you seen these books f " 

They had not seen the books, but the boy 
bought one. 

Whenever you find a small laboring boy 
buying a book and studying it you will soon 
find him going up and up, and it is impossible 
to predict where he will land. 

This boy, whose name was Ch'en, left the 

64 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 65 

soap and candle store and entered the London 
Mission School. 

He studied diligently. 

He was converted. 

Now, one can be converted in sections. 
Some men get their head converted, and one 
man with his head converted without his heart 
can be more trouble in a Church than all the 
rest of the men together. 

Then it is possible to have the heart con- 
verted without the head, and this kind is almost 
as much trouble as the other. He is all froth 
and foam without foundation. We had that 
kind of a man in the great laymen's meeting in 
Indianapolis. "While we were speaking he 
would listen attentively until we were just about 
to reach a climax. He thought he saw what was 
coming before we finished our sentence, and he 
would lean back and, with a seraphic look on 
his face, would clap his hands and say, Amen. 
The first time he said it nobody paid much at- 
tention except to look surprised at the way he 
did it. But after he had repeated it a half- 
dozen times everybody would look in his direc- 
tion and laugh — and we lost our point. He had 
a good heart, but a bad balance wheel. 

5 



66 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Then these laymen tell me — and whenever 
a lot of business men agree in telling me any- 
thing I am ready to accept it — they tell me that 
there is another part of a man that is harder 
to convert than his head or his heart (putting 
his hand in his pocket) — yes, his pocketbook. 
But it is possible to be converted — head, heart, 
pocketbook, and all — and you are ready to say, 
not sing merely — you can sing anything; most 
of us sing only for the music anyhow — but you 
can say with all your nature : 

" I '11 go where you want me to go, dear Lord, 
Over mountain, or vale, or sea, 
And I '11 stay — 

I wish it were written that way — 

" I '11 stay where you want me to stay, dear Lord, 
You can always depend on me, 

Oh, what a power the Church would be if the 
Lord could depend upon every man, woman, 
and child for whatever there was for him to 
do! There is just as much need of men and 
women staying here at home as there is of 
others going to the foreign field. 

That is the way Ch'en was converted. 

He went home and told his mother that he 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 67 

wanted to join the Church and be baptized at 
the London Mission. His mother was outraged. 
"My son join the Christian Church!" But she 
did not forbid it. She was too wise for that. 
Mrs. Ch'en knew that to forbid a boy to do a 
thing he has set his mind on without giving 
him anything else to do, will make him want 
to do it the more. She therefore began to think 
of a way to wean him away from his religion. 

After considering various methods she de- 
cided to have him engaged and married. If 
there was anything that would take a boy's 
mind off his religion it would be the being en- 
gaged and married. 

She selected a young lady named Li, a mem- 
ber of a non-Christian family ; and she told the 
boy he was to be married. 

Of course, he said he would. There was not 
anything else to do. In China the mother se- 
lects the wife for her son ; the father selects the 
husband for his daughter. The mother knows 
the girls; the father knows the boys. They 
naturally select the best they can find, engage 
them to each other without the knowledge of 
the young people, and in due time they are mar- 
ried; and if they fall in love they have to do 
it afterward. 



68 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Ch'en waited until all the arrangements had 
been completed and his mother, according to 
Chinese custom, was about to call a sedan chair 
and send for the young lady. She would be 
brought and put into his apartments, with 
certain other Chinese ceremonies, and they 
would be married. 

But Ch'en said: "No; I propose to be mar- 
ried over at the mission with the Christian cere- 
mony.' And he smiled and shut his teeth to- 
gether. 

And, you know, you can do anything if you 
just smile and shut your teeth together. You 
can't do it if you only smile; and you can't do 
it if you just shut your teeth; but smile and 
grit your teeth, and you can do anything, for 
the world is waiting for you to will, to decide 
what you are going to do, and then the world 
will pitch in and help you do it. 

Have you ever stood beside the railroad and 
watched a great freight train passing? There 
are eight large wheels on the engine driven by 
the piston, and they each seem to say with 
every turn, * ' I will ; I will ; I will. ' ' Following 
them are two or three hundred other small 
wheels, all turning the same way, "I will; I 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 69 

will; I will; I will;" and all because these eight 
are turning. The world is waiting for you to 
decide what you are going to do, and 

Ch'en was married over at the mission with 
the Christian ceremony. 

But you can not keep a wife and study on 
nothing a year— in Peking; so Ch'en had to 
find something else to do. 

The mission wrote him a letter, "To whom 
it may concern," saying that this boy Ch'en 
was very diligent and reliable, and would make 
a good servant to any one needing a "boy." 

"We needed a servant. In China every one 
builds a wall around his house; no one has a 
fence on his farm. We place our houses close 
together ; then we build one wall around the lot. 
That is a compound. Then we have a gate in 
the wall and a gatekeeper in the gatehouse. 
We therefore engaged Ch'en as our gatekeeper. 

He wanted to be a gatekeeper in the house 
of the Lord — he wanted to be a preacher; and 
he said to himself, "If you want to be anything, 
begin where you are, and be it with all your 
might. ' ' What a motto for a boy ! Principals 
of high schools and mothers have telephoned 
me after they had heard these words of Ch'en, 



70 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

asking: "What was that you said about 'If 
you want to be anything?' I want it for my 
boy." 

Ch'en changed the gatehouse into a gospel 
hall, for he began preaching therein. Every 
one who went in or out of that gate was told 
of the gospel in which he believed. Whenever 
he had opportunity he went out to the street 
chapel and preached there. He took trips with 
the missionaries out into the country places, 
where he preached daily, hourly, all the time; 
and our mission history records that the first 
two people that joined our Church in Peking 
were brought in not by the preacher, not by 
the missionaries, but "by Ch'en, our gate- 
keeper — one a scholar, the other a coolie;" the 
highest and the lowest class. 

But Ch'en's wife could not read a word, and 
he said to himself, "If I am going to be a 
preacher, my wife ought to be able to read." 
So he said to her one day, with a kindly smile 
on his face, "I wish you would study the cate- 
chism." 

Mrs. Ch'en was a married woman, and she 
did not propose to begin studying now; but she 
did not say she would not — a woman does not 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 71 

say she won't to her husband — in China. But 
she did not study. 

Ch'en waited awhile, and then he said to her 
a second time, "I wish you would study the 
catechism." Still Mrs. Ch'en did not. 

Again Ch'en waited, and then he ordered 
her to study the catechism. Mrs. Ch'en thought 
matters began to look a bit serious, but she 
paid no attention to the order. 

Ch'en waited longer than usual this time, 
and then he commanded her to study the cate- 
chism. Still Mrs. Ch'en did not obey. 

Now, when Mr. Ch'en had tried every kind 
of moral suasion he could think of, and they had 
all failed, he took her off to a deserted part of 
the compound and whipped her until she prom- 
ised to study the catechism — because he wanted 
to be a preacher. 

I wonder what you would do if your young 
theological students treated their young wives 
in that way. And we knew that Ch'en had done 
it, and we did not bring him up before the 
Church. "Why? Well, first, because we knew 
he had not hurt her. He did not whip her to 
hurt her ; it was just to make her study the cate- 
chism. Then, second, we knew that in China 



72 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

a man has a right to whip his wife — if he can. 
And a woman has a right to whip her husband, 
if she can. And she does it; and that is the 
reason why there has been a woman sitting on 
the throne of China for the past forty-seven 
years. 

Mrs. Ch'en studied the catechism. She 
learned every word of it. She remembered it 
till the last day of her life, and she taught it 
to every one of her children. 

But when her first baby was born it was a 
girl. I wish you could have seen that little girl ; 
she was one of the prettiest children I have ever 
known, and the first remark made by every one 
who saw her was, "What a beautiful child 
Mary Ch'en is!" 

But she was a girl, and that is bad luck in 
China. But in addition to being a girl, she was 
born on the first day of the first month. And 
Grandmother Ch'en said: "That is because you 
are a Christian. Your first baby is a girl born 
on New Year's Bay; you will never have any- 
thing but bad luck all your life." 

Ch'en smiled and went on preaching; and 
his next baby was a boy. 

Old Mrs. Ch'en shook her head and sighed, 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 73 

saying, "It will take more than one boy to avert 
the calamity of the first baby being a girl born 
on New Year's Day." 

Ch'en still smiled and continued to preach; 
and his next baby was a boy. 

Grandmother Ch'en still shook her head, 
but not so vigorously as she had before; and 
Ch'en still smiled and preached; and his next 
baby was a boy, and his next, and his next, and 
his next — five boys in succession; and Grand- 
mother Ch'en had nothing further to say about 
calamity coming to a Christian's home because 
his first baby was a girl born on New Year's 
Day. 

As soon as Mary was old enough to study 
the catechism, Mrs. Ch'en put her to work upon 
it. As the child sat on her little stool at her 
mother's feet she would sometimes say, 
"Mamma, what is this word?" 

"Without looking up from her fancy work or 
sewing, Mrs. Ch'en would answer, "Bead a few 
words before it," and without looking at the 
book she could tell her the name of the charac- 
ter; and so she did with all her children. 

Ch'en called the little girl Mary — for the 
mother of His Lord. His first son he called 



74 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

John, for the most beloved disciple ; then Jacob, 
and he started right down the list of the patri- 
archs. 

There is a lot of character in parents indi- 
cated by the names they give their children. 
Some parents give their boys big, strong names, 
and their girls beautiful, aesthetic names. I re- 
member in my grandfather's family we had 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Elijah. And in my 
father's family we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
Elijah, Eli, John, and some more ; and they put 
Isaac on me. As boys we did not like it. "We 
thought our parents might have been more orig- 
inal in the names they gave us. But as I look 
back over my father's and grandfather's fami- 
lies and find them both keeping to the Old Book, 
even in the names they gave their children, I 
feel rather .satisfied. I think it is a recom- 
mendation rather than otherwise to a boy to 
have two or three generations of ancestors with 
Bible names. There is not much in a name, 
anyhow. Isaac with Newton is a tremendous 
combination. And who would not be Benjamin 
if he could be Franklin, or Abraham if he could 
be Lincoln ? It is the character of the man that 
counts, and not the name. 






A GENUINE PRODUCT 75 

That first boy John! He does not amount 
to much. Jacob died as a child. But that third 
boy is almost a saint. Tell me, why is it that 
two boys, born of the same parents, nourished 
at the same breast, fed at the same table, study- 
ing the same books, in the same seat, at the 
same school, one will be almost a saint and the 
other almost a devil? 

One man answered from the audience, when 
I asked this question, 

"It is heredity, Headland; heredity ac- 
counts for it all." 

"What," I asked, "heredity from the same 



He hesitated, with his mouth half open, but 
did not say anything; and I added: 

"Heredity, individuality, and the gospel 
may account for it, I fancy, but not heredity 
alone. ' ' 

The third son entered the Peking Univer- 
sity. He studied. He completed the course. 
When he graduated he was offered forty dol- 
lars per month if he would go into business in 
Shanghai. This he refused, and became a 
preacher in a small Church up outside the 
Great Wall for two dollars and fifty cents per 
month. 



76 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

The next son graduated. He has been of- 
fered one hundred dollars a month if he would 
enter secular employment; but he refused all 
other offers and became a teacher in the Peking 
University at five dollars per month. The last 
of the five boys graduated. He has just about 
completed the course at Columbia University 
as a doctor of science, in order to return to 
China and take some position in the employ of 
the government. 

Would it not have been a fatal mistake to 
have turned Ch'en out of Church because he 
whipped his wife to make her study the cate- 
chism? It pays sometimes to be lenient with 
the boy who is in earnest. "We learned that 
from the Master. 

Peter denied his Lord; but the next time 
he met the Master, Jesus did not say to him, 
" Peter, you are a fine disciple — afraid to an- 
swer a girl truthfully." You remember the 
next time Peter met Jesus. It was up on the 
Sea of Galilee. Peter had gone up home after 
the crucifixion. One evening he said, "I 'm go- 
ing fishing;" and the rest of the fellows all 
said, "We '11 go with you;" and they all went 
fishing. They fished all night, and they did not 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 77 

catch any fish. The next morning they were 
cold and tired and sleepy and hungry, and a 
voice came from the shore, 

''Children, have ye any meat?" 

"No." 

Well, you are confining your fishing too 
much to one side of the boat. This was implied 
in what He said. And the world for the past 
nineteen hundred years has been fishing too 
much only on one side of the boat. 

"Cast the net on the right side of the boat," 
was the order of the Master, and it was so filled 
with fish that they were afraid to draw it in 
lest it break. And we have been letting our 
net down on the other side of the world during 
the past fifty years, and we have been bringing 
in nations in a day. 

When John heard the voice he said, "It is 
the Lord." Yes, Peter had denied the Master; 
but as soon as he knew it was He, he jumped 
into the sea and swam ashore. And Jesus did 
not say to him: "Peter, you are back at your 
old job again, are you? Have taken all the rest 
with you?" No; He did not say that. He did 
not say anything. Peter just saw a fire of coals 
and fish thereon; and Jesus had prepared 



78 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Peter's breakfast with His own pierced hands. 
And He fed him, and then He preached to him. 
You remember His little sermon? It is very- 
short ; but, oh, what a wealth of meaning there 
is in it for you and me as well as for Peter ! 
"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?" 
"Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." 
And Jesus did know that Peter loved Him 
in spite of the fact that in a moment of weak- 
ness he had denied Him. Then: 

"Feed My hungry sheep." "Feed My 
starving lambs." 

And Peter fed the sheep and the lambs with 
his life. 

" I '11 go where you want me to go, dear Lord, 
Over mountains, or vale, or sea," 
I '11 stay where you want me to stay, dear Lord, 
You can always depend on me. 

And the Master is saying the same thing to 
you and me to-day: 

"Feed My hungry sheep, feed My starving 
lambs." 

The papers tell us that two million and five 
hundred thousand Chinese will starve unless 
America sends them food. Where does Amer- 
ica get the food to send to so many famine- 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 79 

stricken people! How is it that we hear of 
famines in China, and famines in India, and 
famines in Africa, and famine and plague and 
pestilence and poverty in all non-Christian 
lands? 

But when did you hear of a famine in Ger- 
many, or a famine in England, or a famine in 
America, or a famine in any other country that 
has a free Bible? I can not but look upon these 
and all other similar conditions as by-products 
of the gospel. If you can not see them in that 
way — well, all I can say is that it is up to you 
to account for them in some other more rea- 
sonable way. 

Ch'en, yes, he had whipped his wife to make 
her study the catechism; but he was our first 
preacher in the North China Conference, and 
we could send him anywhere and be certain that 
there would be no trouble while he was pastor 
of the Church. He was at the Conference in 
Peking at the beginning of the Boxer rebellion 
of 1900, and was appointed to the same Church 
where his son had gone some years before. He 
took his wife and his youngest son and daugh- 
ter, and reached his Church just two months 
before the Boxers came. 



80 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

When lie arrived the members said to 
him: 

" Brother Ch'en, you must flee, and hide in 
the mountains, because if the Boxers catch you 
they will put you to death." 

His only answer was: 

"I am the shepherd of this flock. When 
all my flock are hidden away and safe, then 
I '11 go and hide ; not till then. ' ' 

In the light of all that happened I do not 
know of anything that seems more Christlike 
than that. "I am the shepherd of this flock. 
When all my flock are safe, then I will run 
away." He delayed too long. As he was go- 
ing out of the village the Boxers caught him. 
The Boxer chief took away his bedding, his 
clothing, his money— everything he had; then 
turned him over to the rabble and said: 

"Now you may do what you please with 
him." 

Without the semblance of a trial they cut off 
his head, and left his body and bones to bleach 
there upon the plains of Mongolia during the 
summer of 1900. 

They beheaded his youngest son, as noble a 
boy as we have ever had in the Peking Univer- 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 81 

sity; and the youngest daughter flew to her 
mother's arms, crying, 

Oh, mamma, what shall we do?" 

"We will all go to heaven together," an- 
swered her mother in simple faith and trust. 

And they butchered the mother and daugh- 
ter locked in each other's arms. 

And Ch'en fed the sheep and the lambs with 
his life. 

" I '11 go where you want me to go, dear Lord, 
Over mountain, or vale, or sea," 
I '11 stay where you want me to stay, dear Lord, 
You can always depend on me. 

Ajid I turned to my friend in the railroad 
train and said: 

"Do you think Ch'en was converted?" 

There were tears in his eyes as he answered, 
"I guess he was." 

"Well, it took us ninety years to get one 
hundred thousand Christians in China. During 
eight weeks of that Boxer trouble of 1900, ten 
thousand of our hundred thousand laid down 
their lives rather than deny their Lord. And 
the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
Church. In ten years since that time we have 
added one hundred and fifty thousand other 



82 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Christians to the hundred thousand we had be- 
fore. But the number of persons gathered into 
the Church is only one of the results of foreign 
missions. The civilization of the world, traced 
back to a last analysis, is the result of the mis- 
sion of the Church. 

"Yet there are tourists who go around the 
world without ever visiting a mission, and then 
return and pose as an authority on missions 
and missionaries. God pity the man or woman 
whose views of the Church are limited to the 
number of members that may be gathered 
within its walls. We call the United States a 
Christian country. Whether it is or not I do 
not propose to say. There are about ninety 
million people in this country, not more than 
thirty-three million of whom are members of 
the Church, and a majority of these are women 
and children. But may I call attention to the 
fact that these thirty-three million of men, 
women, and children dominate and control the 
sentiment of the United States Government 
and make it impossible for a man not controlled 
by Christian principles to exert a dominating 
influence in the government? 

"Now," I said to my friend, "you would 



A GENUINE PRODUCT 83 

not blame Ch'en's sons if they hated those peo- 
ple who murdered their father, mother, sister, 
and brother, would you!" 

"No," he answered; "I would not." 

"Nor would you blame them if they de- 
manded a heavy indemnity for what their par- 
ents lost." 

Again he said he would not. 

"When the Boxer trouble was over," I went 
on, "the Chinese Government offered to pay 
for everything the Christians lost at the hands 
of the Boxers. "When the missionaries were 
settling up the indemnity question they went 
to this boy who had preached in the Church 
where his parents were massacred, and said to 
him: 

" 'Wei-ping, what do you want for what 
your parents lost? They lost everything they 
had.' 

"His head fell; his chest heaved; tears filled 
his eyes; and then he answered, 

" * I do not want anything. ' And they never 
took a cash. 

1 ' The next year, when the bishop was about 
to give him his appointment, before doing so he 
asked him where he would like to go to preach. 



84 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Again his head fell; he swallowed with 
difficulty, and when he could control his voice 
he answered, 

" *I would like to go and preach to those 
people who murdered my father and mother 
and sister and brother;' and this was all he 



• CHAPTER Vn 

BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 

Itt 1890 I boarded a Pullman palace ear in 
Chicago bound for San Francisco. I could go 
to bed as comfortably in that conveyance as 
I could in my own home. I could get up in the 
morning, go into the diner, and have as good 
a breakfast as I could at home; and in three 
days I was carried across vast plains and great 
rivers, majestic mountains and deep ravines, 
and put down in San Francisco, three thousand 
miles away. It was a moving home — a moving 
hotel. 

There I boarded a floating palace to cross 
that — shall I say, trackless ocean ? No ; it was 
trackless until the gospel of Jesus Christ found 
it — as all oceans were. But from that time 
until the present it has been tracked all over 
by those floating palaces. Again I could go to 
bed as comfortably in this conveyance as I 
could at home, and if I did not get up in the 
morning and take as good a breakfast as I could 

85 



86 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

at home it was not because the breakfast was 
not prepared. And I did not. I have a habit 
of not going to breakfast the first morning after 
I get ont to sea. Perhaps you have. But in 
thirteen days I had crossed that ocean and had 
reached Japan. 

There I boarded a still smaller floating pal- 
ace, which took me comfortably over to Shang- 
hai. There I boarded a very much smaller one, 
which took me up the coast of China to Tongku, 
the port of Peking, which was to be my destina- 
tion. 

At Tongku I went on shore and found a 
railroad train. It was a little train, and it was 
not very clean. The seats were made of floor- 
boards. The backs of the seats were perpen- 
dicular floorboards. The floor was dirty; the 
windows were soiled; everything about it was 
dirty. It made me think of the little palm trees 
we have in pots in our homes. They grow 
three, four, or five feet high. Why do they not 
grow as high as the house? They do in the 
tropics. Why? They are out of their element. 
Take a gospel-developed thought — and a rail- 
road train is a gospel-developed thought — and 
put it out of its element, and it dwarfs. But 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 87 

this conveyance took me comfortably and fairly 
rapidly up to Tientsin, some forty miles away. 

There, after a few days' rest I went down 
to the riverside and I chartered a boat all my 
own to go to Tungchou. It was a houseboat. 
It was almost high enough for me to stand up 
in. I could go to bed in that boat ; but, though 
solitary, I was not alone. It is impossible to 
go to bed alone in a Chinese houseboat. And 
it took me from Monday morning till Friday 
evening to reach Tungchou, eighty miles away. 

Here again I went down to the canal, and 
I chartered still another boat to make the last 
stage of my journey to Peking. It was a san- 
pan. San means three, and pan means boards ; 
three boards make a boat. Men had ropes at- 
tached to the front of the boat, and with one 
end of the rope over their shoulder they walked 
along the bank of the canal — it was not a tow- 
path ; there was no tow-path — and pulled us up 
to the walls of Peking. We could not all sit 
on the top of the boat; so the rest of us hired 
donkeys and rode up to the walls of Peking. 

Now, I have given this trip for the sake of 
the contrast: a Pullman palace car, with all 
the comforts of home, two thousand miles in 



88 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

three days in a gospel-developed country, end- 
ing up on "three boards" and a donkey in a 
country where the gospel has not gone; and 
almost every contrast between a country with 
the gospel and one without is the contrast of 
this Pullman palace car and the three boards 
and donkey. There are a lot of people who 
do not believe in foreign missions. I should 
like to take those people and put them down 
on the other side of the world, and let them ride 
on three boards and a donkey until they believe 
in a Pullman palace car and the gospel. 

I want my readers to go with me into Pe- 
king as I found it twenty years ago. The 
streets were built up a foot and half or more 
above the sidewalk. Why! In order that the 
water might run off the street onto the side- 
walk in the rainy season, leaving a dry passage 
for mules and donkeys and carts. Men do not 
count in a country without a Bible. I say that 
advisedly. One of our Chinese students took 
a trip around the world. When he returned to 
Peking he said to the students in the course 
of his address : 

"Wherever I went in non-Christian lands 
I found men doing the work of animals. In 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 89 

Korea they were carrying tremendous burdens. 
In Japan they were pulling jinrikishas. In 
China and India and Africa they were doing 
the work which in England, America, Germany, 
and France is done by the animals. Why, my 
friends, is this?" he concluded. 

And so I say, men do not count in a land 
without a Bible. Humanity is cheap. You can 
buy a man for less than you can buy a horse. 
A woman costs less than a cow. I have 
known little girls to be sold on the streets of 
Peking for two dollars and a half. Only the 
gospel ennobles humanity and banishes slavery. 

And so I say, they built their streets up a 
foot and a half above the sidewalk in order that 
the water might run off the street and leave a 
dry passage for the animals. There were de- 
pressions between the street and the sidewalk, 
in which the water settled, forming pools, some 
of which were so large and so deep that it was 
not only possible, but an actual fact, that peo- 
ple were drowned on the streets of Peking. 

The Chinese do everything the opposite of 
what we do. They put their vest on outside 
their coat; we put ours inside. They put on 
white for mourning; we, black. They shake 



90 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

their own hands in greeting; we shake each 
other's hands. They keep their back yard neat 
and clean; we our front yard. They bring all 
their kitchen refuse, vegetables, and other dirt 
and dump them into those pools in the street. 
They have been doing that for fifteen hundred 
years, and the top dozen feet of the city of 
Peking is saturated with all kinds of human 
and animal filth that your imagination can pic- 
ture. 

They dig their wells down through this sur- 
face soil, and wall them up with blocks of stone 
without any cement of any kind to make them 
impervious. And the rain descends and settles 
down through this surface soil into the well. 
They dip it out, boil it, and make their tea of 
it, and drink it — and the fittest of them sur- 
vive. 

That, however, was twenty years ago. The 
gospel has gone to Peking since that time, and 
wherever the gospel goes purity goes ; and dur- 
ing the last three years pure water from the 
hills fifteen miles west of Peking has been piped 
into the city; and now they have a hydrant on 
every street corner, and each one of these hy- 
drants as it sends forth its stream of pure, re- 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 91 

freshing water gurgles as it flows a by-product 
of the gospel. 

The refuse vegetables which were thrown 
into the pools would sink down and decay. In 
the hot summer-time a thick green scum would 
form on the surface of these pools, broken only 
by the bubbles that came up from these decay- 
ing vegetables. Then, during the burning hot 
days of July and August, when the street was 
covered with two or three inches of dust, the 
street sprinklers would come along with long- 
handled reed dippers, ladle up this water, and 
sprinkle the streets with it. 

Then you would come along in your Chinese 
cart, and the hot rays of the sun would come 
down, and the odors would come up; and one 
of the questions which tourists used to ask each 
other when they were in Peking was, "What 
kind of smells did you smell to-day?" to which 
they usually answered, "Smells that I never 
knew the names of." My friend Carl Fowler, 
the son of Bishop Fowler, told me recently, 
when I was in New York, that when he was in 
Peking, in 1888, he catalogued twenty different 
odors he had never met anywhere else in the 
world. 



92 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

I have given you only a faint glimpse of the 
dirt of old Peking as I found it twenty years 
ago. The real dirt you would not allow me to 
describe, nor would the publishers be allowed 
to print it, even if I were to write it. Only 
I may be allowed to add that in the springtime, 
when every one was suffering from what we 
call "spring fever," the city authorities had 
the sewers cleaned. The dirt, at least a large 
proportion of it, had washed in off the street, 
and it was taken out, piled up on the sidewalk, 
where it was allowed to dry for a week or ten 
days, and was then used for building up the 
street again. 

This, again, was twenty years ago; but 
where the gospel goes, cleanliness goes with it; 
and so now every great street in Peking is ma- 
cadamized and as clean as the macadamized 
streets of an American city to-day. Now, I 
challenge my readers to name a clean city in 
any non-Christian country in the world where 
the influence of the gospel and the missionary 
have not gone. I do not mean to say, nor to 
imply, that the missionaries have brought about 
this condition. But I do say that such a condi- 
tion can not be found anywhere in the world 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 93 

where the gospel has not gone. And so I hold 
that, traced back to a last analysis, every clean 
city, with its paved streets, its macadamized 
streets, its asphalt streets, its cement sidewalks, 
is a by-prodnct of the gospel of Jesns Christ, t 
for all the forces that have contributed to bring 
about these conditions are directly or indirectly 
the result of the Church, or the schools that 
have resulted from the influence of the Church. 

When I arrived in Peking twenty years ago, 
the streets were lit with street lamps. A street 
lamp at that time consisted of four posts with 
a paper house on top, in which was a small lamp 
about the size of a coal-digger's lamp, and they 
lit these street lights on moonlight nights. 
They never lit them on dark nights, for the sim- 
ple reason that at such times every one had to 
carry his own lantern; and these little lamps 
did not give light enough to be of any account. 
So what was the use of wasting the city oil? 
But they lit them on moonlight nights, that the 
cart-drivers might drive along between these 
lights without falling off into the cesspools, and 
perhaps drowning themselves as well as their 
mules. 

That, again, was twenty years ago. But 



94 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

wherever the gospel goes, there light goes ; and 
Peking has not proved an exception. Jesus 
Christ said, "I am the light of the world." 
What did He mean by that? Before I went to 
China I would have interpreted that as mean- 
ing the light that comes into the human heart 
with regeneration. Perhaps that is what Jesus 
Christ meant; I shall not attempt an exegesis 
of the passage. As we have seen, it means the 
light that comes into the darkened mind with 
intelligence. Nay, in the light of the twentieth 
century it means even more than that. It means 
an oil-lamp; for the non-Christian world up to 
the present time has never made a decent oil- 
lamp. If they never made an oil-lamp, they 
could never make a gas-light or an electric light 
or an acetylene light or a gasoline light or an 
oxyhydric light, or any light other than a tal- 
low candle or a dish of oil with a wick floating 
therein. 

Jesus also said to His disciples, "Ye are the 
light of the world." And every kind of arti- 
ficial light, that is worthy the name of light, 
that the world has to-day has been made by the 
man with the Bible, by the man who has been 
developed by Christian institutions. And so 



BY-PRODUCTS IN CIVIC LIFE 95 

now on each side of those great macadamized 
streets in Peking there are two rows of incan- 
descent electric lights, with great arc lights at 
every cross street, and the streets of Peking 
are lit as well as the streets of an American city; 
at night. Is not Jesus Christ the light of the 
world in a bigger way than the world has ever 
yet realized? I can not go down any of our 
principal streets in our great cities at nights, 
with their electric lights and electric signs flash- 
ing out on every hand, without ejaculating: 
"I 'm the light of the world; the light of the 

WOrld, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is JESUS 

CHRIST." I have "heard men say that God 
could not say, "Let there be light," and there 
was light. I can say it ; you can say it ; any one 
can say it, if only he is connected with a mov- 
ing dynamo. And God Almighty is the dynamo 
Himself. I can not push an electric button or 
turn on an electric light— I never do — without 
repeating to myself, "Let there be light, and 
there was light." Oh, what a mighty God He 
is, and what a mighty gospel He has placed in 
our lands! 



CHAPTER VIII 

LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 

I wish you could take a ride with me in a 
Chinese cart. I do not think you would want 
to take more than one; but one is interesting. 
We always take our friends for a ride in a na- 
tive cart when they visit us in Peking. They 
never forget it. 

A Chinese cart is a great big Saratoga trunk 
on two wheels. It has no springs. Why? do 
you ask? Because the non-Christian world has 
never yet made a spring vehicle. Now, you 
eliminate all springs from your life, and see 
how much of your comfort is gone. Take them 
off your bed, your chairs, all your furniture, 
your buggy, your wagon, trolley car, railroad 
train, automobile; take all the springs out of 
your life and see what a rough, jolty thing life 
would be. And so I add, spring vehicles are 
by-products of the gospel. A Chinese cart 
has no springs. It has no seat. You sit down 
tailor-fashion on the bottom of the cart. Now, 

96 



LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 97 

on those old dirt streets or roads — the Chinese 
do not make roads; the cart makes the road — '. 
there wonld be a rut on this side, with none on 
that. The wheel drops into the rut, and yon 
bnmp yonr head on this side of the cart. Next 
there is a rnt on that side ; the wheel drops in, 
and yon bnmp yonr head on that side of the 
cart. Or there may be a drain across the road; 
both wheels drop in at once, and the jolt makes 
yon wish yonr brain was placed on a rubber 
cushion; or, finally, the mule starts suddenly — ■ 
a mule always does what you are not expecting 
him to do ; that is the reason why he is a mule, 
1 suppose — and you bump your head on the 
back of the cart; and when you get home, the 
only thing you can remember of your cart ride 
is the bumps. 

If you were to go with me for such a ride, 
I would take you as I did Mr. William Jennings 
Bryan, for a visit to Liu Li Chang, the book 
and curio street of Peking. The Chinese are 
a great literature-loving people, and have been 
for more than twenty-five centuries, and the 
focal point of all their literature and learning, 
insofar as it is contained in books, is this one 
street; for practically every book published in 

7 



98 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

the empire can be found here. Let me try to 
give some idea of the extent and character of 
their literature. 

I once went with Dr. Morrison, that wizard 
of the London Times, to visit Liu Li Chang. 
He wanted to secure some medical books and 
charts. He obtained some books such as he 
thought he wanted, and finally we found an 
anatomical chart, if such it could be called ; for 
it was only an outline of the human body, cov- 
ered all over with black spots, making it look 
very much as if it had had the small-pox. So 
many of the Chinese were pock-marked that I 
could not refrain from suggesting to the dealer 
in a joking kind of way that the chart seemed 
to have ch'u hua'rh (blossomed out), the Chi- 
nese term when referring to that disease. 

"No," he explained; "those spots mark the 
places where it is safe for the doctor to insert 
the needle in treatment by acupuncture with- 
out killing the patient." 

"May I ask," I went on, "about how many 
patients the doctors would have to kill in mak- 
ing a chart like this before they discovered all 
these ten thousand safe spots!" 

He shrugged his shoulders, as though that 



LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 99 

were not a part of his business, and simply an- 
swered, 

"Pu chih tao" — I do not know. 

He showed us a medical encyclopedia which 
a prince spent thirty years in preparing, copied 
nine times with his own hands, and it contained 
twenty-one thousand prescriptions. Prescrip- 
tions enough in all conscience to cure all the ills 
of life. But when a Chinese has a headache he 
pastes turnip skins on his temples or on the 
sides of his forehead to bring the ache out. 
When he has a sore throat he pinches it up 
and down the two sides and the center until 
it is black and blue, in order that by counter- 
irritation on the outside he may cure the pain 
within. He still has a sore throat, but it is on 
the outside. In the same way he often pinches 
his forehead and his temples when turnip or 
radish skins are not to be had. 

Treatment by acupuncture is not an out-of- 
date method by the Chinese. Not many years 
ago our "boy," a servant who had been with 
us for nine years, suddenly fell ill with cholera. 
The American doctor was summoned at once 
and gave him a dose of cholera mixture. It did 
not take effect at once, and a few hours after- 



100 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

ward, as my wife was entering the compound, 
she saw the "boy" in the gatehouse, where a 
native doctor was treating him to a "dose of 
hatpin under the tongue." 

Some of the prescriptions in this great med- 
ical encyclopedia consist of powdered snakes' 
bones and tigers ' teeth for violent diseases — on 
the principle that virulent diseases require 
strong remedies — a principle that was prac- 
tical by our own physicians not many centuries 
ago. Among their nursery rhymes I found one 
called a "Doctor's Prescription," which, of 
course, is only a child's caricature of the doctor. 
He tells us that 

My wife's little daughter once fell very ill, 

And we called for a doctor to give her a pill, 

He wrote a prescription which now we will give her, 

In which he has ordered a mosquito's liver, 

And then, in addition, the heart of a flea, 

And half pound of fly- wings to make her some tea. 

So far as I know the Chinese have never had 
any medical schools similar to those in the 
^West, nor any native medical schools like those 
in which they taught the Four Books and Five 
Classics. Any one who had an aptitude for the 
study of medicine, arid a disposition to pre- 
scribe for those who were ill, could do so, and 



LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 101 

not infrequently with results not unlike that of 
the grasshopper referred to in a former chap- 
ter. I was myself acquainted with one of the 
court painters, who was drawing a stipend as 
court physician as well as artist. Indeed, it 
was he who gave my friend medicine to dissolve 
his fishbone. 

Among the books in these stores we will find 
a history that would fill a two-horse wagon. 
This is not a universal history, nor a history 
of the world, nor a general history of any kind, 
but simply a history of China. Here, again, we 
may find an encyclopedia that contains as many 
volumes as there are minutes in two weeks. 
Among their poets we will find one who wrote 
as many separate pieces as there are days in 
a hundred years. 

"When the commission appointed by the late 
empress dowager to make a tour of the world 
and examine the constitutions of the various 
governments they visited, for the purpose of 
advising her majesty what kind would be the 
best to adopt as the proposed constitution for 
China, returned to Peking, it published its re- 
port in one hundred and twenty-seven volumes. 
Such are some of the large ways in which the 
Chinese have evinced their love of literature. 



102 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

In a former chapter we referred to the fact 
that no non-Christian people have ever organ- 
ized their thought on any one subject into a sci- 
ence. We might go further and say that no 
Asiatic people have ever done so. Over against 
this statement we ought to place another; viz., 
that none of the world's great religions orig- 
inated outside of Asia. The Asiatic seems to 
think in terms of the universal, the European 
in terms of the particular. The mind of the 
Asiatic is telescopic; that of the European, 
microscopic. The Asiatic deals with worlds 
and gods and universes; the European with 
atoms, electrones, and microbes. And so the 
Asiatic has given the world all its great reli- 
gions, while the European has given it all its 
sciences. 

Of the world's great religions the Chinese 
have originated two, adopted two others, and 
are being rapidly transformed by still another. 
It is a great mistake, therefore, to suppose that 
the Asiatic, and especially the Hindoos and the 
Chinese, are not religious. What Paul said of 
the Athenians is emphatically true of the Hin- 
doos and the Chinese ; they are very religious. 
There are probably ten times as many temples 
and shrines in Peking as there are churches in 



LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 103 

Chicago. Almost every square has its temple, 
and every home, shop, store, and even well, its 
shrine. 

Among the books in the shops on Lin Li 
Chang is one called the Tao Te Ching, written 
by Lao-Tze, the founder of Taoism, during the 
sixth century before the Christian era. In it 
we find the highest level to which the Chinese 
have risen in their statements of moral or re- 
ligious truth, when he urges his followers to 
" recompense injury with kindness." Even 
Confucius himself could not reach this level. 
"When asked by his disciples what he thought 
of Lao Tze's principle, he replied, "Recom- 
pense kindness with kindness and injury with 
justice. ' ' Like many teachers of our own time, 
he was willing to fall below a contemporary 
in principle in order to be original in his state- 
ment. 

In the Confucian books we find the negative 
form of the Golden Rule, often wrongly attrib- 
uted to Confucius as its author. On one occa- 
sion the master in conversation with one of his 
disciples asked, 

"Tze, what is your principle in life?" 

To which the disciple answered, probably 
quoting a proverb of his times, 



104 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"My principle in life is not to do to others 
what I would not have them do to me." A 
good principle for a man to hold, and one which 
he may practice all his life without doing any- 
thing. It is only negative goodness. It is when 
one begins to do to others as he would have 
them do to him that he begins to be positively 
good. And this alone might account for the 
difference in the results of the teachings of 
Confucius and Christ, if there were nothing 
elsei — though there is something else, as we 
shall show elsewhere. 

When Mencius, some three hundred years 
before Christ, was asked by his prince what 
principle he had that would enable him to gov- 
ern his people well, Mencius replied: "I have 
but one principle, Eighteousness. You be 
righteous, and your people will be righteous." 
This, again, was a high type of moral or re- 
ligious teaching for this follower of Confucius. 

But contemporaneous with Mencius there 
was another teacher, independent of both Tao- 
ism and Confucianism, named Mo Tzu, or Mi- 
cius. "We have preserved among his writings 
a whole chapter on " Universal Mutual Love." 
He tells us that if eveiy prince loved every 
other prince as he loves himself, no prince 



LACK OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE 105 

would make war upon any other for the pur- 
pose of enriching himself. If a father loved 
his son, and the son his father; if a mother 
loved her daughter, and a daughter her mother ; 
if neighbor loved neighbor as he loves himself; 
if, in a word — for he goes on in this strain 
throughout the entire chapter — if everybody; 
loved everybody else as he loves himself, no- 
body would injure anybody else for the purpose 
of benefiting himself, and so all the ills of life 
would be cured if only everybody exercised 
universal mutual love." 

Now, when Mencius's disciples asked him 
what he thought of Motze's principle of loving 
everybody else as one loves himself, he an- 
swered, "It would bring us into the state of 
the beasts." They have no more love for their 
progenitors than they have for any other ani- 
mals, and hence we would be no better than they 
are if we did not love our parents better than 
we loved anybody else. 

Again, and this is the last of these high 
moral principles of Chinese literature to which 
I wish to call your attention, there was, contem- 
poraneous with the Apostle Paul, a Chinese 
woman who wrote the first book that was ever 
written in any language for the instruction of 



106 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

girls. It now constitutes the first of the ' ' Four 
Books for Girls," and in it she says, "First 
others, then yourself ;" equivalent to our own, 
"Always prefer others rather than yourself." 
All of these books, with their good moral prin- 
ciples, can be secured in these bookshops of 
Liu Li Chang, and will give us some idea of the 
quality of this class of Chinese literature. 
Touch the Chinese on science, and they are 
weak; touch them on morality, and they are 
decidedly strong; stronger, I think, than any 
other non-Christian people the world has ever 
developed. So far as I know, not even the Hin- 
doos have given statement to so many of the 
highest moral principles as embodied in the 
Christian system as have the Chinese. 

The question naturally arises, if all that I 
have said is true, and our progress is the cause 
of our religion, and the Chinese have all the 
great moral principles that we have, why did 
they not make equal progress 1 To answer this 
question it will be necessary to consider the 
Chinese systems of religion, remembering that 
morality and religion, as we shall show in an- 
other chapter, spring from different states of 
the mind. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RELIGIONS OP CHINA 

The first and most revered of the religions of 
China is Confucianism. It is the outgrowth of 
the teachings of Confucius. It is a worship, but 
not a religion; a worship of genius, but not a 
worship of God. Neither priest nor idol is 
found in a Confucian temple. Every man is 
his own priest, and his only object of worship 
is an ancestor, an emperor, a statesman, a 
scholar, or a soldier. Every home of any im- 
portance has its ancestral tablets. These are 
small pieces of board fashioned after the style 
of a tombstone, on which the name of the ances- 
tor is written or carved. To these homage is 
offered, and this homage may be translated 
either worship or respect. The first objection 
an official will offer to joining the Christian 
Church is that it does not approve of the wor- 
ship of ancestors. 

My assistant pastor, Mr. Liu Mark, gave 
up his salary as a preacher, asking to be al- 

107 



108 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

lowed to preach for nothing and teach English 
in an official's family for his living. He taught 
the sons of the official, and not infrequently 
both father and sons conversed with him about 
his religion. On one occasion the father said 
to him, 

"My only objection to your religion is that 
you do not worship your ancestors." 

"And why do you object on that account?" 
asked Mark. 

"Because I think everybody should wor- 
ship his ancestors," replied the official. 

"You worship your ancestors, I suppose?" 
said Mark, interrogatively. 

"Most assuredly, I do," he replied. 

"Which of your ancestors do you wor- 
ship?" asked Mark. 

"My father, my grandfather, and my great- 
grandfather," he answered. 

"None of them further back than your 
great-grandfather?" asked Mark. 

"I do not know them any farther back," he 
replied. 

"And how will they feel?" asked Mark. 
"Will they not feel unhappy that their sons 
and grandsons are worshiped, while they are 
not?" 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 109 



too"— I never thought of that 
i — replied his excellency. 

"Now, do you not seer' said Mark, "that, 
no matter how many of your ancestors you 
worship, their will still be others that you do 
not, and that it is impossible to get a perfect 
worship unless you go back and worship the 
one God and Father of us all, and thus you 
honor all your ancesters?" 

The official never offered any further objec- 
tions to Mark's religion, but allowed one of his 
sons to join the Church. 

When the great official Li Hung-chang died, 
a temple was erected for his worship (not sim- 
ply in his memory) in Peking, another in his 
native place, and still others in other great 
cities. Every official or scholar who succeeded 
in winning great fame may have at least one 
temple erected for his worship, that in his na- 
tive city or village, or in the place where he 
won his laurels. In Shanhaikuan, where the 
Great Wall enters the sea, there is a temple 
erected in memory of Wu San-kuei, the general 
who succeeded in keeping the Manchus out until 
he asked them to come and help him drive out 
the rebel who had overthrown the Ming dy- 



110 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

nasty. A similar temple is in Changli, for the 
worship of the great statesman and philosopher 
Han Yii, and almost every city and village has 
some temple erected for the worship of some 
one of its own great sons. 

Confucins was born 551 B. C. He was a 
moralist only, and not a religionist. His con- 
cern was man 's relation to man, and not man 's 
relation to God. When asked about God, he 
answered, " I do not know man ; how can I know 
God?" "When asked about the existence of the 
soul after death, he replied, ' ' We know not life ; 
how can we know death?" When asked what 
he thought of Lao Tze's teaching, to "recom- 
pense injury with kindness," he replied, "Rec- 
ompense kindness with kindness, and injury 
with justice." 

The negative form of the Golden Rule, 
which is usually attributed to Confucius, did 
not originate with him, nor was he the first to 
give it expression. On one occasion he asked 
a disciple, "Tze, what is your rule of con- 
duct?" 

"My rule of conduct," answered the dis- 
ciple, "is not to do to others what I would not 
have them do to me." 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 111 

"Tze," answered the master, "you have not 
yet attained to that." 

In estimating Confucianism we should re- 
member that Confucius made no pretensions to 
divine help, power, or revelation. He taught 
men as a man, and taught only about life. He 
made no pretensions to do what he could not, 
or to know what he did not know. As a man 
he has had a greater and better influence upon 
more people than any other man that has ever 
lived. And the Chinese people, the greatest non- 
Christian nation the world has ever developed, 
are more the result of the influence of Confucius 
than of any other person. He gathered up and 
edited the best literature of the past, and made 
a set of classics which are pure in tone and 
which have served the Chinese as a course of 
study for twenty-four centuries. That some 
later scholar did not prepare a better course is 
no reflection on the sage. 

But Confucius was not a deep thinker. He 
was simply a pedagogue. He struck a surface 
depth which is easy to understand, and hence 
could become popular. If Confucius had gone 
deeper his influence would have been narrower. 
Turn from Lao Tze or Chuang Tze to Confu- 



112 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

cius, and it is like turning from Plato or Aris- 
totle to Socrates. One can not but wish that, 
instead of turning the face of China to the past, 
he had turned it to the future, and that, in- 
stead of turning men 's thoughts manward only, 
he had directed them Godward. But the sage 
did a noble work, and it remains for the ' ' Man 
of Galilee" to do what the man of Lu could not. 
Confucius inspired the peoples of Eastern Asia 
in a pursuit of the intellectual just as Jesus 
Christ has inspired the peoples of Western 
Europe in the pursuit of the spiritual, and has 
received the same kind of homage. 

Buddhism. — In the year 65 A. D. the Em- 
peror Ming Ti had a dream in which he dreamed 
that a prophet had arisen in the West. Under 
the leadership of a prince, his brother, he 
formed a company of eighteen officials and sent 
them west to search for the prophet. This was 
about the time Paul was writing his second 
epistle to Timothy ; and one can not but wonder 
what would have happened if Paul and some of 
the Epistles and Gospels, with the Old Testa- 
ment, had been found by this delegation. But 
God pity us if they had found Paul and taken 
him to China instead of allowing him to come 
to Europe! 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 113 

Tliey went to India. There they found some 
Buddhist books and priests, and carried them 
with some idols back to China; and thus Bud- 
dhism was introduced into the middle kingdom. 
And the Chinese say, "Of all sinners Ming Ti 
was the greatest." 

As a matter of fact Buddhism supplied what 
Confucianism lacks — a hope of a future life; 
and this is the reason why Buddhism has got- 
ten such a strong hold upon the people. Of 
course, it is implied in the worship of ancestors 
that the spirits of the ancestors still exist, else 
why worship them? But the hope is indefinite. 
So when Buddhism was brought in, with her 
nirvana and her transmigrations, there was 
something to feed the hope of the bereaved 
ones. 

Buddhism, however, brought nothing which 
corresponds to the Chinese classics or the Bible 
as an educative force; and the system of reli- 
gion which does not foster education must 
surely die. One need only follow the history 
of the Christian Church where the people are 
kept in ignorance and subjection, to understand 
the force of this remark. 

Buddhism undertook to do with priests, tern- 



114 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

pies, worship, and idols what Confucianism un- 
dertook to do with schools. Every nook and 
corner of the universe was inhabited by a spirit, 
and Buddhism put an idol — gold, silver, bronze, 
stone, wood, clay, paper — wherever it could be 
placed, from the kitchen and the front gate to 
the housetop and the well, and gave the people 
something to fear and to worship everywhere. 
But they did nothing to increase the intelligence 
of the people. The temples are dirty, the 
priests are filthy and ignorant and foul. 

" And if the priests be foul in whom we trust, 
What wonder is it a lewd man should rust ?" 

The people affect to despise them, whether they 
do or not; but when death comes to a home, 
both Buddhist and Taoist priests are called in 
to chant their litanies and say their prayers, 
for, not knowing which may be right or which 
wrong, they prefer to consult them all. 

At New Year's time the Chinese burn a 
kitchen god. But before doing so they smear 
his mouth with molasses, so that he will not re- 
port any but sweet things about them when he 
reaches heaven. When friends die, they make 
all kinds of paper houses, rolls of paper silk, 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 115 

carts, horses, sedan chairs, servants, money, 
even cards and dice, if they were fond of play- 
ing, and bnrn them in a bonfire, that the de- 
parted one may have them in the spirit world. 
Each year they place silvered paper on the 
grave as an annual allowance for the spirit. 

Mrs. Headland once said to a princess who 
had prepared these things for her mother-in- 
law, 

"Yon do not think that her spirit will want 
dice, or cards, or the chair in which she was 
borne as a cripple, do yon!" 

"I do not know what she may want," re- 
plied the princess, "but it is a comfort to us 
to do for her anything that she liked when here, 
and so we prepare these things." 

And so they prepare all these usefully use- 
less things just as we put flowers on the casket 
or on the grave. Human nature and human 
sorrow and human needs are the same all over 
the world. 

But the idol that is most worshipped of any 
in China is the goddess of Mercy. There are 
some who think that this is the Virgin Mary, 
carried to China by the Nestorians from 500 to 
800 A. D., adopted by the Buddhists, and in- 



116 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

eluded in their pantheon. She is certainly not 
a Hindoo goddess, as she has neither the fea- 
tures nor the figure of the idols brought from 
that country. 

Taoism (pronounced Dow-ism) is the out- 
growth of the teachings of Lao Tze, who was 
an old man when Confucius began his teaching. 
The highest expression of moral teaching ever 
reached by the Chinese was reached by Lao Tze 
in his "recompense injury with kindness." 
Confucius once visited him, but was unable to 
comprehend his teaching. 

Lao Tze wrote a book called the "Tao Te 
Ching," the classic or Bible of the Taoists. It 
is a small book of only about five thousand 
words. The word Tao means way, Te means 
virtue; and so it has been called the "Classic 
of the Way and of Virtue. ' ' His own explana- 
tion of the Way is so complicated that no critics 
thus far have been able to comprehend it. The 
same expression, Tao, is used for Word in the 
first chapter of John's Gospel, "In the begin- 
ning was the Word." 

The chief teaching of Lao Tze and his early 
followers is, "Do nothing, and all things will be 
done;" a doctrine of inactivity. It is worthy 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 117 

of note that China's greatest philosopher, 
Chnang Tze, a contemporary of Aristotle, was 
Lao Tze's most distinguished disciple. 

Once, when Chnang Tze's disciples were 
conversing as to what kind of a fnneral they 
should give their master, he, overhearing them, 
said, 

"Give me no funeral at all; just throw me 
out." 

"But," they objected, "the birds will eat 
you." 

"Bury me," he answered, "and the worms 
will eat me. You rob the birds to feed the 
worms." 

The Taoists began experimenting as alche- 
mists some two or three centuries before Christ, 
and were the natural scientists of the times. 
Their search was for the elixir of life. It was 
in this way that they discovered gunpowder. 
The great officials of the times despised this 
search for the elixir of life ; but Chin Shih Hu- 
ang, the emperor who built the Great Wall, 
and some of his successors were anxious to get 
the elixir of life, and, of course, there were al- 
ways fakirs to find it for them. On one occa- 
sion one of these Taoists brought a dose to 



118 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

the emperor. An old official, who was present 
when it was brought, drank it. The emperor 
threatened to put him to death. 

"That is impossible, Your Majesty," said 
the official. 

"What do you mean?" asked the emperor. 

"I have taken a dose of the elixir of life," 
answered the official. 

"That shall not save you," said the ruler. 

"If it can not save me," asked the official, 
"what is the use of Your Majesty taking it?" 
And his wit saved his life. 

This pandering to the wants of others has 
been a characteristic of the Taoists throughout 
their history. They began to adopt the gods 
of the Buddhists and add them to their own; 
and this they continued to do until their pan- 
theon is equal to that of the Buddhists. 

Lao Tze left China, so the story goes, riding 
upon a cow. As he was going out of the north- 
west pass, the gatekeeper made him stop and 
write a book, the "Tao Te Ching," before he 
would let him through. As he never returned, 
he was supposed to have sublimated and gone 
to the celestial regions, where he holds meetings 
with the best of his followers until the present 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 119 

time. Eight of the greatest of his disciples are 
called the Eight I mm ortals. One of these is 
"Li of the Iron Staff." 

Li is said on one occasion to have gone in 
spirit to a meeting with Lao Tze, leaving his 
body in charge of a disciple. The mother of 
the latter died before Li returned, and he was 
forced to leave the body to go and bury his par- 
ent ; so that when Li returned, his body had be- 
gun to decay. (Why it would not decay while 
the disciple was watching it, does not concern 
the Chinese.) "When Li returned and found 
his body in a state of putrefaction, he looked 
about and saw the body of a lame beggar from 
which the spirit had just departed, and, slip- 
ping into that, he has been hobbling about on 
an iron staff ever since. Most of the Chinese 
fairy tales are connected with Taoism. 

About the third or fourth century of our 
era there was a war for supremacy between 
these three religions. The Buddhists built 
temples and decorated them with their idols. 
The Taoists built temples too, and decorated 
them with pictures of their gods and their im- 
mortals. The Confucianists built schools and 
decorated them with paintings of the great men 



120 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

of the past. This continued for several centu- 
ries. Sometimes one would lead in popular fa- 
vor, and sometimes another. Taoism was al- 
ways ready to adopt a god or a genius, if by 
so doing she could win the hearts of the people. 
It was in this way that Chinese art took its rise ; 
so that art in Asia, as in Europe, was developed 
in connection with religion. 

"What these three religions undertook to do 
for China, Christianity did for Europe and 
America. Confucianism undertook to develop 
the intellectual life of the people. This it did 
in a very imperfect way. It furnished a system 
of study which, with the learning of the Chi- 
nese language, has produced a greater memory 
development in the Chinese than in any other 
people in the world ; but it left the thinking fa- 
cilities, such as reason and invention, practi- 
cally dormant. Contrast the old educational sys- 
tem of Confucianism with the great university, 
college, and public-school system of Europe and 
America, and we can readily see what a failure 
Confucianism has been at its strongest point. 
Or, if we question its failure, we only need to 
remember that the Chinese themselves have 
given up the old Confucian system for the 



THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 121 

Christian system, even adopting every seventh 
day as a day of rest. 

Buddhism undertook to furnish the Chinese 
with a system of worship and a hope for the 
life beyond. In this she also has failed. No 
Chinese scholar will admit that he is a Bud- 
dhist. The people as a whole do not admit that 
Buddhism as a system is* worthy of their re- 
spect. They seek the priests as a last resort, 
but from childhood they have no respect for 
the priests, and ridicule them in their play and 
in their nursery rhymes, as witness the follow- 
ing: 

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, little girl fair, 

There 's a priest in the temple without any hair, 

You take a tile and I '11 take a brick, 

And we '11 hit the priest in the back of the neck. 

Taoism undertook to furnish the Chinese 
with a system of science. She experimented as 
in alchemy. She tried astrology. She under- 
took to explain the laws of nature. But all her 
efforts have resulted in nothing more than 
Feng shua: demonology, soothsaying, and nec- 
romancy. And now, at the beginning of the 
twentieth century, the Chinese people have 
opened all doors to the learning, the science, 



122 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and the religion of the West, and are sending 
their brightest pupils to be educated in Europe 
and America. Nay, she is even sending her 
princes and her highest officials to learn about 
the Christian countries, that she may adopt a 
system of government that has never been de- 
veloped by any but a Christian people. 



CHAPTER X 

BY-PRODUCTS IN INTELLECTUAL 
DEVELOPMENT 

Feom what we have seen of the Chinese systems 
of religion, we are driven to the conclusion that 
they have failed. They have done what they 
could, but they are man-made systems, and they 
can but do a man-made system 's work. No peo- 
ple can rise higher than their religion. Con- 
fucius and Mencius, Lao Tze and Mo Tze, and 
the other noble men who worked with and who 
came after them, have raised China up to their 
own level, the level of a man; and there they 
must stop until a longer lever with a greater 
purchase and power is placed under her. 

That power, as we has seen, is not Taoism, 
Confucianism, Buddhism, nor Mohammedan- 
ism. These have all been tried. They have had 
their chance for from twelve to twenty-three 
centuries, and they have confessedly failed. 
What shall be done now? Shall we withdraw 

123 



124 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and say China is hopeless? Shall we say no 
people has any right to offer their religion to 
any other people? or shall we send our mission- 
aries with the message of the Master — a mes- 
sage of salvation, of healing, and of intelligence 
■ — and see what that will do? Jesus Christ as 
He came to this world was especially designed 
as a Savior of men, of all men, and of the whole 
man — physically, mentally, morally, spiritually ; 
and the message which He has left us, if 
rightly interpreted and applied, can not but 
bring about the same results among the people 
of other nations and races as it has among our 
own. 

I was talking with an eminent psychologist 
not long since — one of the new psychologists, 
who do a tremendous amount of experimenting 
with the brain, the nerves, the eye, ear, nose, 
throat, taste, touch; a physiological psycholo- 
gist, or a psychological physiologist, or what- 
ever we may term the new psychologists, but 
certainly a master in his own line of work — < 
and during the conversation I said to him: 

"I suppose you will admit that the human 
brain is the highest type of physical creation; 
will you not?" 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 125 

' ' Certainly, ' ' lie replied ;"we all hold that, ' ' 

' ' You believe, as we all do, that the body is 
only the house in which the real man lives — the 
tools with which he works; do you not?" I 
went on. 

"Yes," he replied. 

"But this house is important, and these 
tools are essential to his development," 

"Very few people," he answered, "have 
any conception of the complicated mechanism 
of the human body." 

"I suppose, also, that you admit," I con- 
tinued, "that somehow connected with this 
brain there is a thinking man — an intellectual 
man. ' ' 

"Certainly I do." 

""Well, now, will you admit that reason is 
to the thinking man about what the brain is to 
the physical man — the highest faculty, the most 
intricate and complicated of the thinking 
powers, and the most difficult to develop 1" 

"Yes," he replied, "the memory is simple 
and easily developed ; a kind of a storehouse for 
facts. The imagination runs riot even in a 
child. But the reason does not appear until 
later in life, and it requires the solution of a 



126 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

long list and a great variety of problems for 
its development." 

' ' And what would you say the reason or the 
thinking man deals with?" I asked. 

"Things," he replied, without hesitation. 
' ' The thinking man relates us to the world and 
the things of the world." 

"Does it not relate us to laws!" 

"To laws as things, again I answer, yes. 
We think about laws as things," he replied. 

"Does it not relate us to man?" I asked, 
further. 

"To man as a thing, yes," he replied; "but 
not to man as a moral being." 

"And how are we related to man as a moral 
being?" I inquired again. 

"By our moral nature," he replied. 

"What do you mean by our moral nature?" 
I asked. 

"I mean," he went on to explain, "that man 
is a moral being as well as an intellectual being. 
That he has a moral nature that is as distinct 
from his intellectual nature as it is from his 
spiritual nature, and that he has moral faculties 
just as he has intellectual faculties." 

"What do you mean by moral faculties?" 
I inquired. 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 127 

"What do you mean by intellectual facul- 
ties?" lie asked, in return. 

* ' I mean powers of tlie mind that have cer- 
tain definite functions, or states of the mind 
when it does certain definite work," I replied. 

' ' That is exactly what I mean by moral fac- 
ulties," he answered. 

"You mean," I asked, "that conscience is 
to the moral man what reason is to the thinking 
man?" 

' ' Exactly. Conscience is just as truly a fac- 
ulty or state of the mind as reason ; has just as 
definite functions, and is as capable of develop- 
ment by the same laws and methods," he as- 
serted. 

"lam not sure tha4 I understand what you 
mean," I answered. 

"Man is a trinity," he explained, "without 
any reference to his physical nature. The psy- 
chical part is threefold. The lowest of these 
three is the intellectual or thinking man, with 
all his faculties and powers. To develop the 
reason, we have definite studies, such as the va- 
rious departments of mathematics. Above the 
thinking man we have the moral man, and con- 
science is to the moral man what reason is to 



128 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

the thinking man. It is just as much a faculty 
as reason, and is capable of development by the 
same laws and exercises; and yet, unfortu- 
nately, we do not have, in a single college or 
university in the world, so far as I know, a sys- 
tem of study that is designed to develop con- 
science as mathematics develops reason." 

' l You think, then, that our system of educa- 
tion is defective, " I suggested. 

"It is incomplete," he answered. "We 
have been spending all our energy thus far on 
the development of our intellectual nature, with- 
out paying any attention to our moral faculties. 
What we want is a moral mathematics — a study 
which will do for conscience and the moral na- 
ture what mathematics does for reason." 

"That would be difficult to make, would it 
not?" I objected. 

"Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonom- 
etry, calculus, and the various other mathemat- 
ical studies were not easy to make, but we made 
them. We can make anything we are interested 
enough to undertake. Most of us have never 
even thought of the necessity of such a study." 

"How would you undertake to make such a 
study?" I asked. 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 129 

''I am not certain that I know," he an- 
swered. "It would probably have to be a prac- 
tical application of a good many things that we 
already know. It might be that after we had 
taught the students certain things they would 
be sent out to do them a la Squeers. It might 
be that students would be held responsible for 
and examined in their conduct toward their fel- 
low-students and their teacher as carefully as 
in their books." 

"You mean that it would be a science of our 
relations one with another?" I asked. 

"Certainly," he replied. "As our intellec- 
tual nature relates us to things, our moral na- 
ture relates us to our fellow-men. Conscience, 
our moral faculty, enables us to distinguish be- 
tween right and wrong and urges us to do the 
right and avoid the wrong. The way to de- 
velop one's arm is to use one's arm; the way to 
develop one's reason is to use one's reason; 
so, on the same principle, the way to develop 
one's conscience is not only to know what we 
ought to do, but to do what we ought to do." 

"Our educational system, as it stands to- 
day, then, is very incomplete," I suggested. 

"In so far as a thorough education is con- 

9 



130 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

cerned, most assuredly, ' ' he answered. ' ' When 
we have passed the schools we are only one- 
third developed. Onr moral nature and our 
spiritual nature still lie dormant, except as they 
have heen helped hy the Church or by home in- 
struction. Most of the schools pay no atten- 
tion to the moral and spiritual development of 
the students, though these, or either of them, 
is of more importance than the education of 
the intellect, while both of them are totally dis- 
regarded by the schools." 

"Is not your statement too strong?" 

"What statement?" 

"You say that the moral faculties are of 
more importance than the intellectual facul- 
ties," I added. 

"Are they not!" he asked. 

"I have always thought of the intellectual 
development as being the most important of 
all," I said. 

"So have most people," he added, "and 
that is where the trouble lies. But is our rela- 
tion to things as important as our relation to 
our fellow-men? Is it as important that I un- 
derstand the law of gravitation, or that I can 
operate the laws of electricity or steam, as it is 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 131 

that I can operate the 'Golden Rule' or the 
'Judge not, that ye be not judged?' You know 
of young men who spend four years of study in 
the university trying to understand and be able 
to manipulate the laws of electricity, — and be- 
come an electrical engineer. But did you ever 
hear of a man going into college and spending 
four years in an effort to understand and be 
able to operate the moral laws f "What we want 
as a result of our college work is a greater 
number of moral engineers! Our moral nature 
is higher than our intellectual nature, and more 
difficult to develop ; and hence we have scarcely 
begun upon it, not to say anything of our spir- 
itual nature." 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"I mean to say," he added, "that away 
above the moral man there is another man, the 
spiritual man ; and this religious man is as far 
above the moral man as the moral man is above 
the intellectual or thinking man. Now, faith 
is to the spiritual man what conscience is to the 
moral man and reason to the intellectual man. 
Just as much a faculty, just as susceptible of 
development, and by the same laws and rules 
as reason. But there is not a theological school 



132 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

in the world, so far as I know, that has ever 
thought of attempting to construct a system of 
study that would contribute to the development 
of faith as mathematics does reason. That we 
have faith there is no question. That it is ca- 
pable of development no one, I think, has any 
doubt. The only question that remains to be 
settled, then, is this : Is it possible to construct 
a study, or a system of studies, to co-ordinate 
and correlate a series.of laws and facts in such 
a way that by a thorough, systematic, and con- 
tinued study of the same we may secure a faith 
development commensurate with our reasoning 
power?" 

"You think, then, that the faith of the 
Christian peoples is not equal to their reason," 
I remarked. 

"Do you think it is?" he asked. "In my 
judgment, we are a race of reasoning or think- 
ing monstrosities and of moral and spiritual 
pigmies. We think, think, think; there is no 
problem too big for us to undertake. We are 
ready to spend our lives boring down to a last 
little analysis of some problem in chemistry or 
physics, or rooting out some new element, or 
ferreting out some new power of nature; but 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 133 

how much of the time spent in our education is 
put on the development of a conscience that is 
sensitive to the slightest variation from the 
laws of rectitude and the rules of honesty? If 
there were as much time and effort spent on 
the development of a sensitive conscience as 
there is on the manufacture of a sensitive ther- 
mometer, the world would be better than it is 
to-day. ' ' 

"Our faith does not seem to be very highly 
developed," I remarked. 

' ' It is not developed at all, ' ' he added. ' ' We 
talk about reasoning out a problem. But who 
ever heard any one talk about faithing out a 
matter. We have made reason into a verb, be- 
cause just as soon as a faculty goes to work it 
must work as a verb. But who ever heard of 
conscience or faith having been made into a 
verb! Why! I answer, simply because we 
have never yet set conscience or faith to work 
on the moral and spiritual problems of life." 

"Do you think that the words conscience 
and faith could be made into verbs?" I asked. 

"Anything can be made into a verb if it can 
be put to work. There are great spiritual prob- 
lems which will never be solved unless they are 



134 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

faithed. Who by searching, thinking, reason- 
ing can find out God ? Spiritual problems must 
be solved by spiritual faculties. No man could 
solve a problem in euclid by faith. Nor could 
any one solve a spiritual problem by reason. 
You can no more reason the things of faith than 
you can faith the things of reason. Each must 
do its own work in its own realm. ' ' 

"What, then, is the realm of faith?" I in- 
quired. 

"The realm of spiritual things, " he an- 
swered. "Reason links the thinking man with 
things. Conscience links the moral man with 
his fellow-men. Faith links the religious man 
with God. The whole man is thus tied up to 
the whole universe. " 

"According to this, then, we are only one- 
third developed," I suggested. 

' ' Quite right, ' ' he answered ; ' ' and that the 
lowest third." 



CHAPTER XI 

NEED OF BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 

In thinking over my conversation with my psy- 
chological friend I could not but admit that he 
was more than half right in his views of our 
lack of development and the shortcomings of 
our educational system, and I determined, if 
possible, to talk the matter over with some of 
our leading educators. This opportunity came 
recently, when visiting one of our State univer- 
sities, and one of the leading professors said 
to me: 

"I have been told that proposes to 

spend three million dollars on a department of 
morals. What do you think of such a use of 
funds?" 

"The best use that could be made of them," 
I answered. 

"Would you be willing, if you were at the 
head of an institution, to sink that amount of 
money in a scheme as impractical as that?" he 
asked further. 

"You mean," I returned, "would I make an 

135 



136 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

effort to float a project of that kind with that 
amount of money?" 

"Well, it amounts to the same thing,' ' he 
answered. 

"I think I would," I answered. "And then 
I would try to get three million dollars more to 
float a department of religion." 

"What do you mean?" he inquired. 

"Just what I say," I answered. 

"But I do not understand," he urged. 

"I would teach boys and girls the impor- 
tance of being religious, and how to be reli- 
gious, just as I would teach them how to be 
clever." 

"But you do not mean to say that you can 
teach boys and girls how to be religious and 
moral?" he rejoined. 

"Why not?" I answered. 

"Why, the way to be moral and religious is 
just to be moral and religious," he explained. 

' ' Then, on the same principle, the way to be 
clever is just to be clever; is it?" I asked. 

"No; to be clever, one has to study," he an- 
swered. 

"Isn't goodness and piety as important as 
brilliancy?" I inquired. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 137 

"Oh, yes; I suppose so. But they are not 
so practical," he answered. 

"What do you mean by practical?" I asked. 

1 ' Useful, ' ' he answered. ' ' You can 't live on 
goodness and piety." 

"Live," I answered; "you do not have to 
live, but you have to die; and goodness and 
piety are a good deal better to die by than bril- 
liancy. That is practical; isn't it?" 

"No; but the present age is an age when 
we want to turn all our knowledge to account. ' ' 

"You mean, when we want to transform all 
our brilliancy into money?" 

"Well, practically it amounts to that." 

"And is that, therefore, the best thing to 
do?" 

"That is the disposition of the age. You 
examine the courses of study in our colleges 
and universities. Notice how many of them are 
of a practical nature. It is a practical age. 
Men want to use the knowledge they acquire. ' ' 

"In what way?" I asked, for I perceived he 
was just now leading up to the subject I wanted 
to discuss; for I had recently listened to two 
addresses by the presidents of two of the larg- 
est universities in America, and both of them 



138 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

discussed the practical nature of the present 
age— practical being the ability to use for per- 
sonal ends all the knowledge and power one ac- 
quires during his college course. 

"Well, for instance, take any college cur- 
riculum. You will find that a large percentage 
of the courses of study are of the nature of en- 
gineering — civil, electrical, mining — or some 
other practical character which enables a man 
to make a better living," he explained. 

"Yes, I have observed that," I answered; 
"but because that is so, is it therefore best? 
Should it be the whole object of an educational 
institution to teach men to be smart and enable 
them to do their less fortunate brothers, or 
should it be a part of their duty to teach them 
to be good and make it easier for others to live 
as well as themselves?" 

"Sure," he answered. I give his own ex- 
pression: "It is the business of the school to 
make men smart, and the business of the 
Church to make them good." 

"I venture," I answered, "that nine-tenths 
of the people think as you do. I am inclined to 
believe that the opinion of the government is 
the same, for not much attention is given to 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 139 

morality and religion in our State universities. 
But does that make it right? Have n't we been 
a bit narrow in the past! Or may I put it in 
another form? Have we not been so intent on 
understanding nature and the things about us, 
that we have paid too little attention to our- 
selves? Have we not been so anxious for the 
present that we have given too little thought to 
the future? Have we not thought so much of 
our stomach and our back that we have forgot- 
ten that the other fellow has a stomach and a 
back as well? Have we not thought so much 
about having to live that we have forgotten that 
we have to die? I do not mean to say that mo- 
rality and religion are only good to die by. 
They are as good to live by as intelligence; 
but there are other things than living, and 
there are others who have to live besides our- 
selves. One of the dangers of an education is 
that it will make men clever without making 
them good, and enable them to take advantage 
of their fellow-men for their own personal ends. 
In other words, education is liable to become 
self-culture for selfish purposes. Self-preser- 
vation may be the first law of nature, but self- 
sacrifice is the first law of God." 



140 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Well, you do not think that an education 
should be self -culture for benevolent purposes, 
do you?" he exclaimed. 

"Pretty nearly," I answered. "An educa- 
tion at best is a very selfish thing. It is a pour- 
ing in — just pouring in — shoveling in, or draw- 
ing out, of a young mind. The young people 
who are getting an education are just getting, 
getting, getting all the time, and not giving out. 
They are being done for, but are not doing any- 
thing for any one else. Now, does it seem right 
that the State, or the public, should provide in- 
stitutions to devote their time — all their time — 
to a few of these young people in order that 
they may live the more easily at the expense of 
the food producers and the clothes producers, 
unless they can add very materially to the com- 
fort or happiness of mankind as a whole ? ' ' 

"But you can not induce people to spend 
their time securing an education in order to 
devote themselves to the good of others," he 
said. 

"That depends upon how you teach them. 
If you teach them that the object of an educa- 
tion is to get more out of life rather than to 
put more into life, to do others rather than to 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 141 

do for others, to try to be happy rather than 
. to try to make others happy, you can not get 
thern to devote themselves to others. But if 
you teach them that the first twenty-five years 
of their life should be spent developing them- 
selves in order that the second twenty-five years 
may be spent in the service of others, you will 
probably produce a very different class of 
scholars." 

''What is that you say?" he asked, in sur- 
prise. "Do you mean that a fellow should 
spend twenty-five years in hard study in order 
to fit himself to work for others ? ' ' 

' ' That is one way of putting it, " I answered, 
"though I should express it differently. I 
should spend twenty-five years trying to find 
myself, and getting right views and right values 
of life ; then I would spend the next twenty-five 
trying to express myself in terms of my relation 
to my fellow-men. There is some excuse for 
a farmer living who does not do a benevolent 
deed all his life ; he is producing food for man- 
kind. There is some excuse also for a laborer 
who has no time for anything but the support 
of his family ; he is doing the work of the world 
and is thus a producer. But he is a pitiable 



142 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

figure, indeed, who, with an education, produces 
neither food, clothes, work, thought, comfort,, 
nor consolation, but spends his time trying to 
secure his own ease and prolong his own life. 
He is a parasite on the public; and the system 
of education that leads or teaches young people 
to believe that an education is being secured in 
order that they may live more comfortably 
rather than that they may help others to be 
more comfortable and happy is radically wrong. 
The fruit of an education should be very much 
like the fruit of the spirit. " 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Well I wish that expression of the 'little 
hook-nosed Jew who trod the air into the third 
heaven and learnt the most beautiful things' 
were in some other book, that I might quote it 
from a man as a man — a great man — rather 
than as a preacher." 

"What expression!" 

"That expression about the fruit of the 
spirit." 

"Oh, you mean love and all those other 
things?" he said, interrogatively. 

"Yes; do you know what they are?" 

"I don't think I do, in the order in which 
your little Jew names them." 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 143 

"Well, if you do not know them in the order 
in which he names them, there is no use of 
knowing them at all," I remarked. 

"Why?" he inquired. 

"Because everything depends upon the or- 
der in which they come. Paul in those nine 
words is trying to express his conception of the 
moral and religious development of a human 
soul — or his moral and spiritual education ; for 
that is what it is. Now, if our educational in- 
stitutions would follow those directions in the 
development of young people, instead of only 
trying to teach them about things, we would 
have a much more rounded and symmetrical lot 
of young people sent out from our colleges year 
by year." 

"Let me get my Testament and look at it," 
he exclaimed. "I have never thought of it in 
relation to an education." 

"There are nine of them, you observe," I 
continued. "Group them in three bunches of 
three each, for you will not find anywhere else 
in the world three such clusters of fruit." 

"The first three," he remarked, as he read 
them over, "are 'love, joy, peace;' but they do 
not strike me as any particular part of an edu- 
cation. ' ' 



144 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Indeed," said I, interrogatively; "do you 
not observe that love, joy, and peace, like an 
education, take effect upon one's self! They 
have nothing to do with any one else. They 
are absolutely the most selfish things in the 
world in that you can not give them to any one 
else. You can not share them with others. No 
matter how much you may want to do so, you 
can not divide your joy with your best friend. 
It is yours, and yours alone." 

"Oh, I do not think you are right!" he ex- 
claimed. "Why, I have always been taught 
that love is the most unselfish thing in the 
world. ' ' 

' ' Then you have been wrong, ' ' said I, under- 
standing exactly what he meant, but without ex- 
plaining myself. "Love is yours. It is yours 
alone. You may inspire it in some one else, but 
you can not divide it with him. Joy likewise 
is yours. To inspire in others ? Yes, perhaps ; 
but not to divide. Peace is yours. Yours only, 
with no power to divide it, however much you 
may want to do so, with any one else. You may 
lie down at night beside your friend, your wife, 
your husband, at perfect peace with yourself 
and all the world, while they think and worry 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 145 

and toss upon a bed of unrest ; and gladly would 
you divide your peace with, them, but you can 
not do so. You may try to comfort them, but 
you can not share your peace with them. Love, 
joy, and peace, the firstfruits of the spirit, like 
an education, are the result of one's own con- 
duct or effort, and can not be given to us by 
any one else." 

"Now, aren't you twisting the meaning 
there?" he said, dubiously. "It looks as if 
what you say is right, but I had never thought 
of them in that way before." 

"I think not," I answered. "Love and joy 
and peace are the personal part of a moral and 
spiritual education, just as the memory, reason, 
and imagination are the personal part of an in- 
tellectual development. Without them we are 
moral and spiritual imbeciles. They ought to 
come in youth at the same time with our intel- 
lectual development, and the cultivation of them 
(I do not mean any sexual affection, but a dis- 
position to be affectionate, happy, and peace- 
ful) ought to be as much a part of our system 
of education as the teaching of mathematics 
and science. If these are developed in youth 
we are prepared for a happy and successful 
10 



140 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

moral and spiritual life ; and if not — then canes, 
crutches, and bolsters. Now, what are the next 
fruits of the Spirit?" 

" 'LongsufTering, gentleness, goodness,' " 
he read from Galatians. 

1 'Well, what do you make of that?" I asked. 

"I do not make anything of it," he replied. 

"Do you not see how naturally that follows 
upon the heels of love, joy, and peace?" I in- 
quired. 

"Not exactly," he answered. 

"I do not understand how you can fail to 
see it," I urged. 

"See what?" he asked. 

"See the connection," I answered. "Just 
as soon as one has within himself a well-devel- 
oped love, joy, and peace he can not but express 
himself in longsufTering, gentleness, and good- 
ness toward his fellow-men. When one has a 
well-developed reason, imagination, or invent- 
ive power, he wants to go to work on things and 
make machines, poems, pictures, or solve the 
riddle of the universe ; so when one has a well- 
developed affection and a well-cultivated dispo- 
sition he will just as naturally go to work upon 
his fellow-men in his exercise of longsufTering 
or patience toward them in their shortcomings, 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 147 

gentleness in their dealings, and goodness in 
their conduct. It is the conscience of the man 
in action. It is his moral nature operating on 
his fellow-men. And it is as much more impor- 
tant than intellectual development as the man 
is of more consequence than the machine he 
operates. And yet we put young people into 
school and teach them for twenty-five years to 
develop their thinking powers, paying little at- 
tention to their morals, and even turning the 
New Testament and prayer out of our public 
schools. ' ' 

"It does look a good deal more important 
and more serious than I had ever thought it 
was," he answered, as he read the words over 
again and again. 

1 ' Well, what is the last cluster of that fruit 
of the Spirit?" I asked. 

" ' Faith, meekness, temperance,' " he read; 
and before I could stop him he finished the 
verse, " ' against such there is no law.' " 

"Well, there isn't any occasion in the di- 
vine regime for any law against such things, 
though there seems to be a good deal of opposi- 
tion to temperance in some States," I re- 
marked. 

He smiled. 



148 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Now, you notice," I continued, "that this 
last cluster links us up with God, just as the 
former linked us with our fellow-men, and 
leaves us in the closing and more mature years 
of our lives to perfect our own character in the 
development of meekness and temperance. 
Love and joy and peace come in youth; but who 
ever knew a child to be meek or temperate ! ' ' 

"Yes, or to exercise any great faith! " he 
added. 

"What do you mean?" I asked in turn, for 
I was not sure I understood him. 

"Why," he explained, "children and young 
people want to know, and are not satisfied with 
believing." 

"I must confess I do not yet understand," 
I added. 

1 * I mean, what you know you do not have to 
believe, and what you believe you admit you do 
not know," he explained. 

"I hardly think I agree with you," I re- 
marked, "at least altogether. Faith, it seems 
to me, is a faculty which enables us to get a 
kind of knowledge that reason can not get; viz., 
a knowledge of God, of salvation, and of a fu- 
ture life. For instance, I know I am saved. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS ^U9 

I did not get that knowledge through imagina- 
tion, through intuition, nor through reason, but 
through faith." 

"But can you know you are saved?" he 
asked. "Do you not just believe you are?" 

"By no means," I answered; "I know it." 

"How?" he asked. 

"Well, this is where the man of reason and 
the man of faith part company," I answered. 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Why, the man of reason holds that all our 
knowledge comes through reason. And our 
knowledge of things, I suppose, does, except 
where faith in a theory helps us. But faith as 
a faculty helps us to ferret out spiritual veri- 
ties, just as reason helps us to solve temporal 
problems ; and when we have ferreted them out 
— or faithed them out— we are just as certain of 
them a,s we are of any other facts." 

"For instance?" he said, interrogatively. 

"Well, then, for instance," I answered. 
"When I was a boy of eighteen, and one must 
give personal experience in order to illustrate 
with personal knowledge, I did not feel satisfied 
with my life. I felt that T ought to be a Chris- 
tian. I had not been a bad boy, that is, I did 



150 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

not swear, or steal, or love low company, but 
I went to church and Sunday school, and was, 
on the whole, as my teachers and neighbors 
would have admitted, a good son, a good 
brother, a good boy. But I was not satisfied. 
Revival services were being held in our church. 
I did not attend them at first because I was 
teaching at the time, walking seven miles a day 
to and from school, and I persuaded myself that 
I had enough to do. 

" About a week after they had begun, my 
mother asked me if I was not going to attend 
the services. I answered that I was not; that 
my long walk and teaching was about all I could 
do. Then she said: 

" 'Are you afraid to go?' 

"I shut my teeth together and said to my- 
self, 'I '11 show mother that I am not afraid to 
go/ and I attended the meetings every evening 
of the week. 

" Saturday evening there was a lecture in 
our schoolhouse, and I took my young lady 
friend to hear it. As we were driving home she 
asked : 

" 'Has any one gone to the altar at the re- 
vival services?' 

"I answered that no one had. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 151 

" 'That is queer,' she replied. 'There are 
so many young people in your neighborhood 
who do not belong to Church, and everybody 
likes a Christian better than one who is not a 
Christian. ' 

"Now, that seemed the most reasonable 
thing I had ever heard, and I decided that on 
Sunday night I would go forward, kneel at the 
altar, and seek salvation. I did in all honesty. 
I prayed. I got rid of everything I had that 
would separate me from God. I prayed during 
my walks to and from school, but I did not re- 
alize a single change. This continued all the 
week. On Saturday forenoon a meeting was 
held. The people told me to believe, and I 
would be converted. I could not understand 
how I was to believe I had a thing that I did 
not have or did not know I had. I went home 
on Saturday morning. My brother and I were 
sitting in the parlor. He was trying to start a 
tune which he did not know very well. I had 
not sung a word the whole week, but I butted in 
and started the thing for him. Mother looked 
in from the dining-room and asked: 

" 'Was some one converted at the meeting 
this forenoon?' 

" 'No,' I answered. 



152 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

" 'Are you sure?' she asked. 

"And I said to myself, 'I believe I am; I be- 
lieve I am ; ' and with my first ' believe ' came the 
knowledge that I was, and from that time until 
the present, thirty-four years, I have known. 
That is what I mean by faithing out a thing. 
There is a kind of knowledge that comes by rea- 
son — a knowledge of things; and then there is 
a kind of knowledge that comes by faith, just as 
clear, just as definite, and very much more val- 
uable and important ; and hence I think the rea- 
son for God's having given us the command- 
ment as He did." 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"I mean that God gave mankind four com- 
mands in regard to Himself — the first four — 
the burden of which was that we should love 
Him with all our heart, mind, soul, strength. 
The most important relation a man has, if we 
are to judge from these first four commands, is 
relation to God; and hence it is the most rea- 
sonable thing in the world to believe that we 
can faith out that relation. Then the last six 
express our relation to our fellow-men: we 
should honor our father and mother, and love 
our neighbor as ourself, and never try to do 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 153 

Mm out of his life, his character, his property, 
or anything that is his. Now, if the Almighty 
spent the whole force of the Ten Command- 
ments on our relation to Him and our fellow- 
men — onr moral nature and our religious na- 
ture — would it be an impractical use of funds 
to have a department of morals and a depart- 
ment of religion in every one of our colleges? 
"Wouldn't it be the part of wisdom to get all 
of our young people linked up to the whole uni- 
verse, rather than to have them tied down to 
material things alone?" 

"I do not know but it would. But most 
people do not think of it in that way," he re- 
plied. 

' ' Quite right, ' ' I answered. 1 1 A great many 
people used to think that it looked wise to pre- 
tend to be agnostics; ignoramuses, for that is 
what an agnostic admits himself to be. But 
that time is past. In these days, however, so 
much attention has been given to a knowledge 
of laws and forces and powers and things that 
students seem to think it a sign of weakness 
to be found studying about moral and religious 
matters, when in reality the highest and best 
two-thirds of their psychical nature (^w) is 



154 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

so dwarfed and undeveloped that they do not 
even have the power to conceive, or to realize 
the largeness of the worlds of thought that lie 
beyond their horizon. ' ' 

"I do not think I understand what you 
mean," he remarked. 

"Haven't you heard men say that religion 
is all right for women and children, but it is 
not big enough for men? Or, if you have not 
heard them say it with their mouths, go to any 
of our churches and look at the congregation 
and see how they say it with their lives. Go 
and listen to some of the baccalaureate ad- 
dresses in some of our great colleges and uni- 
versities, and see how the practical character 
of an education is dwelt upon for fifty-five min- 
utes, and then the last five minutes are given 
to a reference to the moral and religious nature 
in a sort of an apologetic tone, as though it 
had no right to be there. I am not talking any 
supposition. I am simply describing what I 
heard in two great addresses by the presidents 
of two of our greatest universities not a month 
ago. Nor am I referring to anything that is 
uncommon. Go to any of the Commencement 
exercises of our State institutions and you will 
hear the same thing." 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 155 

"But you would not teach religion in our 
State institutions, would you?" he asked. 

"Why not?" I rejoined. "I would not 
teach sectarianism — Protestantism, Catholi- 
cism, any ism; but I would try to develop good- 
ness and reverence in young people as I develop 
intelligence. I would try to give them some 
conception of what they are. I would try to 
develop in them some understanding of their 
whole nature. I would try to show the smarty 
who thinks he is intelligent because he knows 
something about the earth, its strata, and its 
history; the rocks, the minerals, and precious 
stones ; the animals , the insects, the reptiles, 
and the birds ; the moss, the lichens, the flowers, 
and the trees; the combinations of air and 
water and ten thousand other things ; the laws 
of matter, of magnetism, and of mind ; the mo- 
tions of the planets and the compositions of the 
stars ; that he has only begun to understand the 
elements of things. I would try to impress 
upon him that if he wished to be really intelli- 
gent he would ferret out and explain what time 
and space and infinity and existence and beauty 
and duty and right are. And then, after he had 
explained these to his own and my satisfaction, 
I would urge upon him never to be satisfied with 



156 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

his accomplishments until he was able to do his 
duty toward his fellow-students, his teachers, 
and his fellow-men, and live in a right attitude 
toward God and get results from prayer; and 
then he would be in a fair way in his probation 
for eternity. Some of those who think they are 
rich and clever and famous will wake up some 
time to the fact that what they thought was 
treasure is filthy lucre, that what they thought 
wisdom was foolishness, and what they thought 
fame was only notoriety; and they will find 
themselves starting in upon eternity as half- 
inch dwarfs because of a misconception of 
values during the period of their probation and 
education." 

* ' But how are you going to find time during 
a college course for the study of all these 
things!" he asked. 

"One could not find time during a college 
course for the study of all these things," I re- 
plied. "But one ought to find time while young 
people are in school to make right impressions. 
We do not get an education while in college. 
We only get a start, a trend. We ought to 
learn enough to enable us to study, but we ought 
to get right impressions and right values of life. 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MORALS 157 

We will not all be inclined to follow the same 
course, but we should all know enough of reli- 
gion and morals as constituent elements in an 
education to prevent us from sneering at the 
highest parts of our nature as unimportant, 
and focusing our minds on our lower faculties 
as though they were the highest. " 

"Jesus increased in stature (physically) 
and in wisdom (mentally) and in favor of man 
(morally) and in favor with God (spiritually), " 
and He was the perfect Man. 



CHAPTER XII 

BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 

One Sunday in August, 1909, I was invited to 
give an address in the great auditorium at 
Ocean Grove, N. J. I arrived at Ocean Grove 
on Saturday, and was given a ticket of admis- 
sion to a musical entertainment, the principal 
performer in which was the great singer Jom- 
melli. There were more than seven thousand 
people present, and in addition to her singing, 
selections were given by others on the piano 
and on the great organ, one of the largest, I 
think, in the United States, designed, placed in 
the auditorium, and directed by Mr. Jones, 
whom you will easily recognize if you are at 
Ocean Grove by his Paderewski method of 
dressing his hair. 

The following morning I spoke to an audi- 
ence of nine thousand people on "The By- 
products of Missions, ' ' and during the address 
I called attention to the great organ, the enter- 
tainment of the previous evening, and to the 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 159 

fact that one might search the non-Christian 
world in vain for a human voice, cultivated and 
developed like that of Jommelli. 

To my surprise, after the address I discov- 
ered that Jommelli was on the rostrum behind 
me, and at the close of the service asked to be 
introduced, and also introduced her husband to 
me. As we were stopping at the same hotel, she 
inquired if she might talk with me some time 
during the afternoon, to which I, of course, 
replied that I should be glad to have the honor 
of her acquaintance and an opportunity to talk 
with her. 

During the conversation of the afternoon 
she said: 

4 'Mr. Headland, it was a new thought to me 
that one might search the world, I mean the 
non-Christian world, around and not find a 
well-cultivated human voice. Is that true?" 

" You have been around the world, have you 
not?" I inquired. 

"Yes," she replied, "I have; but I did not 
think to look for singers. I suppose I was so 
interested in singing myself that I did not think 
to hunt for others." 

"You have been in theaters in China, Japan, 



160 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

India, and other Asiatic countries, have you 
not?" I asked again. 

"Yes," she replied, "I wanted to learn 
something about their music, and so I attended 
their theaters." 

"Did you find any voice that you thought 
was being used properly," I inquired, "or any 
school for the cultivation of the voice?" 

1 ' None, ' ' she answered. 

1 ' Neither will you find any such, though you 
search the non-Christian world around, ' ' I said. 

"And how do you account for this?" she 
asked. 

"By the Church," I replied. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean that the Church is the cause of the 
world's music," I answered. 

"Impossible," she replied. 

"You know the history of the development 
of music, do you not?" I went on. "Was it 
not a demand on the part of the Church for 
proper music that developed the first conserva- 
tories? Were not the first great musical com- 
positions sacred rather than secular? Were 
not the first composers churchmen ? Follow the 
history of music, and you trace it back to the 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 161 

same source as the history of art. I do not 
mean to say that music remained under the su- 
pervision of the Church any more than did art, 
but it was the demand of the Church for proper 
music for her worship that has called forth the 
musical talent of the world; and you, madam, 
would not have been using that beautiful voice 
of yours to-day but for the Christian Church. 
Every human voice that is furnishing the world 
with the music of to-day, as well as the voices 
that are hushed forever: Patti, Melba, Eames, 
Calve, Caruso, Delmores, Nordica, Fremstad, 
Mary Garden, Alice Nielsen, Zenatello, Bonei, 
Cavalieri, Constantino, Lipkowska, Baklanoff, 
Amato, McCormack, Boninsegua, Emmy Des- 
tinn, Sammarco, Anselmi, Mardonis, Scotti, or 
Tetrazzini, are, whether they recognize it or 
not, by-products of the gospel." 

"Yes," she replied, "I had not thought of 
it in this way before. I suppose we do not give 
the Church credit for all that it has done in the 
civilizing and socializing influence it has had 
upon the world. I had never thought of the 
Church but as a religious institution. I think 
most people think of it only as such." 

"No doubt they do," I replied; "but that 
11 



162 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

is a very narrow view. Turn now to the great 
musical compositions, those that have most 
touched the world's heart. Are they sacred or 
secular?" 

"Sacred, of course," she replied. "But 
that is because of the natural human instinct to 
be religious." 

"Is that true?" I asked. 

"Is it not?" she counter-questioned. 

" If it is, " I replied, ' ' why do not the Chinese 
and the Hindoos have such music?" 

"Perhaps they are not so religious as we 
are," she replied. 

"Who gave us the great religions of the 
world?" I queried. 

"I have never thought who," she answered. 

' ' China gave us two : Taoism and Confucian- 
ism; India two: Brahmanism and Buddhism; 
Persia one: Zoroastrianism; Arabia one: 
Mohammedanism ; and Palestine two : Judaism 
and Christianity. The Europeans never orig- 
inated a religion that was worth propagating. 
How comes it that we are more religious than 
they, when they originated all the religions?" 

"Ah! indeed; I had never thought of that. 
That is extremely interesting. We are not re- 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 163 

ligious enough to have made great sacred com- 
positions without the stimulus of Christianity ! ' ' 
she exclaimed. "I shall always be more inter- 
ested in religion than I have been heretofore. 
We are indebted to it for all the products of 
our musical genius ! ' ' 

"Nay, more," I replied; "we are indebted 
to it for all our great composers as well. ' ' 

"Ah?" said she, with an interrogatory tone. 

"Are we not!" I asked. "Could we have 
had a Mendelssohn, a Wagner, a Meyerbeer, a 
Eubinstein, a Verdi, a Liszt, a Rossini without 
the demand, the stimulus, the preparation, the 
sentiment, and the inspiration that have come 
from Christianity?" 

' ' Indeed, our debt is great, ' J she exclaimed ; 
' ' greater than it had ever occurred to me to con- 
sider ! ' ' 

Just as she spoke it began to thunder, as I 
supposed, and we both bent our ears in an atti- 
tude of listeners. 

"Ah," she exclaimed, with a flash of appre- 
ciation in her eyes, "the organ is playing." 

"The organ of the spheres," I answered. 

"No, the organ in the auditorium," she re- 
plied. 



164 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Is not that thunder?" I asked. 

1 * No ; that is the organ, ' ' she answered. ' ' It 
is a very good representation of thunder, is n't 
it?" 

"It is, indeed. I was convinced that it was 
thunder, in spite of the fact that the sun is shin- 
ing," I remarked. "That organ is a great ad- 
vance on the Chinese sheng." 

"What do you mean?" she queried. 

"Did you not see the Chinese sheng — the 
oldest representative of pipe organs f " I asked. 

"Oh, you mean the half of a cocoanut with 
bamboo tubes or pipes of various lengths at- 
tached?" she said, with an interrogatory ac- 
cent. ' ' But I did not learn when it was made, 
whether before or after our pipe organ. And 
I had not thought of associating the two." 

"Yes, I think the Chinese should be given 
credit for having made the first pipe organ," 
I said. "The Emperor Huang Ti appointed a 
committee about 2697 B. C. to select a series of 
bamboo tubes of various lengths, so the story 
goes, to represent the seven musical notes ; for 
they have seven instead of eight, as we have. 
They did so, and the result is preserved in the 
sheng, the ancestor of the pipe organ, if we 
may so call it." 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 165 

"That leads nie to speak of what I wanted 
to talk to you about/' she said; "Chinese mu- 
sic. They have a system of music, have they 
not?" she asked. 

"They have," I answered. "The emperor 
appointed his committee, had them select their 
musical bamboo tubes, arrange their scale, and 
begin making their musical instruments, and so 
far as I know they have not made any marked 
changes in it from that time until the present, 
except that modern music of a theatrical or 
popular class began in the Tang dynasty. 
They have, therefore, two classes of music : the 
ritual and the popular. The former is used in 
acts of worship in which the emperor takes part 
and holds a place of the highest importance in 
the government." 

"Have you ever heard any Chinese music 
that was pleasing to your ear?" she asked. 

"Shortly after I went to China," I replied. 
"I must confess that I sympathized with that 
person who described Chinese music as 'deli- 
ciously horrible, like cats trying to sing bass 
with sore throats.' But before I left China I 
never passed a shop at New Year's time where 
an orchestra was playing without stopping to 



166 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

listen to the minor strains of some of their 
stringed instruments. Now, I may be preju- 
diced, for I am very fond of the Chinese, and 
am ever seeking to find their good qualities. 
But my friend, Mr. Van Aalst, who has studied 
Chinese music more than any other living Euro- 
pean, says 'the ritual or sacred music is pass- 
ably sweet, and generally of a minor charac- 
ter;' and we are told that 'Confucius was so 
ravished on hearing a piece composed by the 
great Shun, more than 2200 B. C, that he 
did not taste meat for three years.' On one 
occasion, in 1896, I was attending a meeting 
of the China Educational Association, when 
the Christian Endeavor Convention met in 
Shanghai. Among the musical selections given 
was one by a soloist accompanied by an or- 
chestra of Chinese instruments consisting of 
a sheng, a flute, a clarionette, and a stringed 
instrument corresponding to our violin. I never 
saw an audience so moved by music. They 
listened to the first verse with rapture, the 
second verse with ecstasy, while during the 
third verse they could not control themselves, 
but all joined in with the singer with un- 
bounded enthusiasm. During the fourth verse 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 167 

all rose to their feet and sang with, an abandon 
I have never witnessed in an andience; and 
when the song ended they clapped, stamped, 
waved their handkerchiefs, and almost went 
wild. Now, I want to add that this was a Chris- 
tian hymn, composed by the Chinese to a Chi- 
nese tune, snng by a congregation of some five 
hundred young Chinese Christian Endeavorers. 
But the enthusiasm was refreshing. ' ' 

" And what about their musical instruments! 
They are mostly very crude, are they not?" she 
inquired. 

"The sheng is simple, crude, and ingeni- 
ous," I answered. "But it was the introduc- 
tion of the sheng into Europe, according to va- 
rious writers, which led to the invention of the 
accordion and the harmonium. And it is also 
said that Kratzenstein, an organ builder of St. 
Petersburg, having become the possessor of a 
sheng, conceived the idea of applying the prin- 
ciple to organ stops. It is the most delicate of 
construction, and is the most delicate of tone, 
though many other instruments are much more 
universally employed, especially in the north. 
The banjo, the violin, the guitar, the harp, the 
flute, and the clarionette are the most commonly 



168 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

used in the north of China. The sheng is com- 
mon in and about Shanghai and the south. But 
all of them are very crude. The intervals of the 
scale are not tempered, and the notes sound 
false and discordant to our ears. There is no 
precision in the construction of the instruments, 
no exactness in the intonation ; the melodies are 
very much in the same key, equally loud and 
unchangeable in movement, and naturally be- 
come wearisome and monotonous to an ear ac- 
customed to the music of the West. Their mel- 
odies are never definitely major nor minor, but 
float between the two, and hence lack the vigor, 
the majesty, or the tender lamentations of our 
minor modes, or the charm resulting from the 
alternation of the two modes. Moreover, they 
have no satisfactory method of expressing time. 
In a single word, it is enough tc say that their 
music is not scientifically constructed, and no 
more is their musical instruments, and hence 
can not please an ear that is offended by a lack 
of exactness. But now let me quote how a Chi- 
nese says their music affected him. He says it 
moved 

" 'Softly, as the murmur of whispered 
words; now loud and soft together, like the 



BY-PRODUCTS IN MUSIC 169 

patter of pearls and pearlets dropping in a mar- 
ble dish; or liquid, like the warbling of the 
mango-bird in the bush; trickling like the 
streamlet in its downward course. And then, 
like the torrent, stilled by the grip of frost, so 
for a moment was the music lulled, in a passion 
too deep for words.' " 

"It must be admitted," she said, "that that 
description would fit very well to that of a 
musical enthusiast in Italy or France. I do not 
know but their music affects them as ours 
does us." 

"I think it does," I answered. "But you 
were asking about their musical instruments, 
and, indeed, I began telling you about their mu- 
sical instruments as a result of hearing the 
thunder of the organ in the auditorium." 

"Quite right," she replied. 

"The contrast between their instruments 
and ours is very striking, ' ' I went on. ' ' Theirs 
are crude, rough, hand-made, in small hovels 
rather than shops or factories. The strings on 
most, if not all their stringed instruments, are 
silk rather than gut, and none that I have ever 
seen are wrapped with wire. They have noth- 
ing that corresponds to our organ, piano, or 



170 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

large pipe organ; indeed, our musical instru- 
ments of the largest kind, again, are by-products 
of the gospel in the intelligence that was neces- 
sary to make them, and of the Church in its de- 
mand for them. For, but for the Church, there 
is little, if any, reason to believe that the manu- 
facture of musical instruments would ever have 
reached the condition it has." 

"You seem to give the gospel credit for all 
our progress in music, ' ' said Madam Jommelli. 

"I give the gospel credit for having devel- 
oped the school that made possible the intelli- 
gence to make such musical instruments; and 
then I give the Church credit for having created 
the demand which led manufacturers to furnish 
the supply," I answered. 

"And I think you are more than half right, 
Mr. Headland," she said, as she rose to go. 
"I have enjoyed very much this conversation. 
I have a better opinion of the Chinese, a larger 
view of the Church, and I like the gospel better 
than I ever did before. I shall read my New 
Testament with a different relish." 



CHAPTER XIII 

BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 

I was invited recently to deliver a lecture on 
Chinese art before the Century Club of New 
York. I wish to say that I do not pose as either 
an artist nor an art critic; but I have made a 
collection of Chinese paintings and have made 
a sufficient study of European art to justify 
what I wish to say in this chapter. There were 
present that evening some of the most noted 
American authors, artists, and art critics, 
among whom I think I may mention Mr. F. 
Hopkinson Smith, Mr. John La Farge, and Sir 
Caspar Purdon-Clarke. 

After the lecture Mr. John La Farge, who, 
I believe, deserves to be ranked among Amer- 
ica's most renowned artists, and who was spe- 
cially interested in Oriental art, said to me: 

"What do the Chinese regard as the under- 
lying motive in the beginning of their art?" 

"The desire to express their thoughts in 
pictorial form, I think,' ' I replied. 

171 



172 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"And what were their first studies?" he 
further inquired. 

"Figures, so far as I have been able to 
learn," I replied. 

"Then leaving figures, what did they seek 
to do next!" he asked. 

"They began to make pictures of build- 
ings and maps of conquered territory," I an- 
swered. 

"Then, of course, they drifted off into land- 
scapes by adding touches of scenery or flowers, 
and trees to their figures, I suppose," he sug- 



" Quite right," I replied. 

1 ' Now, in your study of Chinese art, did you 
discover what it was that gave the first great 
stimulus to their art, and about what time?" 
he inquired. 

"Indeed I did," I replied ; "it was the intro- 
duction of Buddhism, about 65 A. D." 

"In what way?" he asked. 

"From about 1100 B. C, when we find the 
first record of a painting, down to the time of 
our present era almost everything we come 
upon in their records are figures, paintings, and 
maps. About the beginning of our era there 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 173 

were two great portrait galleries erected, in 
one of which were placed pictures representing 
all the great mythical as well as the great his- 
toric rulers of the past, and this was called the 
Chou Kung Li Tien. In the other were placed 
portraits of the twenty-eight great men who 
helped to establish the Han dynasty. This was 
called the Yun T'ai Hall. There is a record of 
still another gallery, the Han Lu Ling Kuang 
Tien, in which were painted all kinds of bogies 
from the mountain and monstrosities from the 
sea in colors which harmonized with what the 
artist thought the original ought to be. In or- 
der not to be behind the men in the preserva- 
tion of portraits of her sex, the Empress Liang 
(125 A. D.) had painted for herself imaginary 
portraits of all the female worthies mentioned 
in the 'Becords of Famous "Women' (Lieh Nil 
Chuan), a noted book of the time, preserved 
until the present day. Though as early as 65 
A. D. the Emperor Ming Ti, who introduced 
Buddhism into China, established the custom of 
having court painters, a custom which has con- 
tinued until the present." 

"Ah, indeed, I did not know that they kept 
court painters," he remarked. 



174 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Ola., yes; the late empress dowager sup- 
ported eighteen court painters," I answered. 

"But, to return to the subject," he con- 
tinued, "you were speaking of the introduction 
of Buddhism." 

"The first six hundred years after Bud- 
dhism was introduced into China was a period 
of almost constant war. From 200 A. D. to 
600 A. D., a period of four hundred years, there 
were ninety rulers sat upon the throne or 
thrones, as compared with thirty during the 
previous four centuries. But during this same 
period there were three religions striving for 
supremacy: Taoism, Confucianism, and Bud- 
dhism; and each was using everything that 
would contribute to its permanent establish- 
ment, either at court or in the hearts of the 
people. Nothing was more powerful than art, 
and so the Confucianists decorated their schools 
with portraits of their scholars, the Buddhists 
their temples with pictures of their divinities, 
and the Taoists their temples with pictures of 
their fairies and immortals, with an occasional 
genius stolen from the Confucianists or a god 
from the Buddhists. This decoration or fres- 
coing of the temples — for it was all done on 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 175 

the walls, fixed the attention of the people on 
pictorial representation, and thus the art of the 
Orient was developed in connection with its re- 
ligion." 

"The same is trne of pictorial art in 
Europe," said Mr. La Farge. 

' ' What do you mean f " I inquired ; for while 
I thought I knew what he meant, I wanted to 
hear him say it. 

"To the Greeks," said he, "I suppose we 
must give credit for having reached the highest 
proficiency in sculpture ; but the first real stim- 
ulus to European pictorial art was given it 
when the Italians, the Spanish, the Dutch, the 
Flemish, and the Germans began to utilize it 
in the decoration of their churches. This is es- 
pecially true of portraiture; for, as you know, 
even portrait painting had not attained to any 
degree of development until men and women 
began to pose as members of the Holy Family 
and other sacred personages for the altar pieces 
and other paintings and decorations in Euro- 
pean churches. But for more than two centu- 
ries, from Cimabue and Giotto to Titian and 
Veronese, the great artists confined themselves 
almost entirely to sacred art in their frescoing 



176 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OP MISSIONS 

of the cathedrals and churches, and portrait 
painting as such was an outgrowth of this sa- 
cred art." 

1 1 The same is true of each of the European 
countries, in the development of its art, is it 
not?" I inquired. 

1 ' Yes, ' ' he answered. ' ' Italian art dreamed 
of beauty, and in a measure it realized its 
dream, tinted with the colors of a Venetian sky 
and the glow of heaven in the heart of the artist. 
Flemish art was in love with truth, and it held 
its mirror up to nature — but nature to advan- 
tage dressed ; for the glow of the spiritual also 
shone in all the Flemish art of the Eenaissance. 
German art rarely achieved either truth or 
beauty; but it succeeded in rendering, with a 
fidelity that was often almost brutal, the virile 
character of the German people, both before 
and after the Reformation. But all art that 
was worthy of note was inspired by the reli- 
gious zeal of the ages, and executed by men who 
were more or less true to the religious ideals 
of their time." 

"What would you say were the studies most 
affected by the artists of those times ? " I asked. 

He thought for a moment, and then he an- 
swered : 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 177 

"The Virgin and the Christ, where it was 
possible to decorate the churches in the Eoman 
Catholic countries, portraiture, and then land- 
scapes among the Protestant peoples. The art 
idea had caught the hearts of rulers and people 
alike, and in spite of the fact that they were 
not allowed to decorate their churches they cul- 
tivated their art.- But their homes were small 
and dark, and their town halls and public build- 
ings were decorated with portraits of sheriffs, 
burgomasters, surgeons, or groups of directors 
of charitable institutions, or scholars. But art 
among the Protestant peoples lost that touch 
of the spirituelle which was not counterbalanced 
by anything that it gained in strength or natu- 
ralness. And now, five hundred years after- 
ward, the pictures most in demand are those 
that were inspired and executed by mem filled 
with a religious zeal." 

"And now," Mr. La Farge, "I want to ask 
you what you think of the comparative value of 
Oriental and Occidental art," I said. 

"I am not sure that I know enough about 

Oriental art to give an intelligent opinion," he 

answered. "I am not sure that any Occidental 

does. There are interesting features about Ori- 

12 



178 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

ental art that are different from anything we 
have yet conceived of. Their brushwork is one. 
Their point of view is another. Their perspec- 
tive is still another. Their materials — paper 
and silk instead of canvas — is another. But it 
seems to me they emphasize the grotesque, and 
they lose in a lack of naturalness. You have 
paid more attention to Oriental art than I have ; 
what do you think V 

"I wanted your opinion as an artist," I in- 
sisted. 

''My own opinion is that the Oriental has 
almost everything to learn from us, while there 
are but few — there are some — suggestions in 
his art for us that we have not already struck in 
the development of our own art. For instance, 
his colors are almost all pulverized minerals 
mixed with water and glue, the same as those 
used by the Italians of the early Renaissance. 
These we have long ago given up for oil and 
canvas, and thus far we have not had occasion 
to return to them. His paper and silk, with his 
method of mounting on scrolls, are convenient 
and economize space; but I doubt if they con- 
tribute to the preservation of the picture or en- 
hance its richness or beauty as we can by our 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 179 

frames. But, I repeat, you have paid more at- 
tention to Oriental art than I have. What is 
your own opinion of their comparative values I ' ' 
"My own opinion," I remarked, "I fear, is 
the result of the attitude at present assumed by 
the Oriental toward his own art. The natural 
disposition of the Yankee, as we dub the Amer- 
ican, is to be the first to take anything new that 
will add to what he has. This is one reason why 
he is what he is. He is always on the lookout 
for new things that are good. On the other 
hand, the Oriental has always been a bit slow, 
except in the case of the Japanese, to learn from 
the Western Barbarian, as he has termed him. 
We find in this particular case, however, the 
tables turned. The Japanese, who was the first 
to learn about European art, has practically 
given up his own, which was originally Chinese 
art adopted and adapted to Japanese use, while 
the most noted Chinese artists of the present 
day, attracted by the naturalness of our birds, 
animals, and portraits, are adopting our meth- 
ods instead of their own ; while the late empress 
dowager, the greatest of Chinese rulers for a 
century past, left at least three of her own por- 
traits, painted by Western artists — Miss Carl 



180 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and Mr. Vos — in the national gallery. Consid- 
ering the indifference of the Oriental to West- 
ern things, his indisposition to change, and his 
slowness to appreciate the good in others ; and 
considering the quickness of the Westerner to 
appreciate, at least, anything that will add to 
the commercial value of anything, I should say 
that Western art has every advantage over that 
of the Orient, else the Oriental would not have 
adopted it, and the Occidental would have 
adopted his." 

"I think you are more than half right," said 
Mr. La Farge, as he bade me good-bye. 

Now, this is the conclusion to which my 
conversation with this great American artist 
has led me: That the best art that the world 
has to-day, or that the world has ever known, 
has been inspired and executed by the man who 
has been developed by the gospel of Jesus 
Christ, and hence is a by-product of the gospel 
and of missions. 

The history of each individual is the history 
of all time. The little child with his rattle and 
his toys, his whistle, drum, and noise is the 
savage with all his destructive tendencies and 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 181 

his indifference to everything hut his own 
wishes. The little hoy with his blocks builds 
his pyramids, his Assyrian and Babylonian 
palaces, his stonehenge or his Sphinx, his Par- 
thenon or his Acropolis. He is a builder and 
passes through the building age of the world's 
civilization — that age which gave to the Chinese 
a wall stretching fifteen hundred miles from the 
sea and winding like a great dragon from moun- 
tain top to mountain top, far up into the desert. 
Coarse and rough, gigantic and magnificent, 
almost sublime in its bigness, but not beautiful. 
Then comes the dark age, when his sleeves and 
trousers are too short, and her legs and tongue 
are too long ; when they organize crusades, and 
shoot and scalp, and go to Sunday school, and 
talk religion and philosophy, and doubt and 
dispute. Then comes the Renaissance, when he 
begins to brush, and she begins to primp, and 
the flowers begin to bloom, and his imagination 
paints pictures in every field and forest, glade 
and glen; when he sees "books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every- 
thing." And again he builds; but what he 
builds depends upon the advantages and the 
stimulus he has had. The Mohammedan builds 



182 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

mosques, the Buddhist builds temples, the 
Christian builds cathedrals and churches. But 
what a striking difference in the results ! These 
little savages have been studying in different 
schools, they have been living in different 
worlds. Those put paper windows in their tem- 
ples, that are blown off with every passing 
wind, and the floor of the temple is covered 
with dust. 

They are but dimly lit during the day, for 
the light of heaven with difficulty penetrates 
the paper pasted upon the lattice work. They 
are more dimly lit at night, for a tallow taper 
or a pith floating in a bowl of oil is the only 
light their intelligence has ever devised. Their 
idols grin at them from the shadows of every 
corner, and the bat flitting from rafter to rafter 
scatters dust and dirt upon them as they bow 
before their gods. Bagged priests, upon whose * 
faces are carved the lines of ignorance and ava- 
rice, stretch out soiled hands for the more filthy 
lucre their nation has provided for them to give. 

Now turn to these who have built cathedrals 
and churches. "Words fail to picture their mag- 
nificence. Their walls and ceilings are deco- 
rated with angels, in colors that rival a sunset 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 183 

or a rainbow. Their floors are covered with 
velvet rugs of silk and wool that deaden every 
footfall. Their carvings and their statues rival 
in their perfection the work of their Creator, 
and their windows, each a work of art in itself, 
softens the light of the noonday sun and sheds 
a halo about the bowed heads of the worshipers 
as they kneel before their God. Their priests 
are clad in robes of silk and satin such as be- 
come the servants of the God they worship. 
And the architecture and the cathedral and the 
painting and the sculpture and the carpet and 
the windows, yea, and the priest and his robes 
are products or by-products of the gospel of 
the God they serve. 

It is only when we thus consider the differ- 
ence in the details of the civilization of the East 
and the West, and see how far they are behind 
us in every respect of national, social, religious, 
scientific, and individual progress, and then try 
to account for these differences on some racial 
hypothesis, that we see how impossible it is. 
We only need to go back twenty centuries in 
history to find the nations that are now lagging 
behind, leading the race; and the nations, or 
peoples — for they were then only savage tribes, 



184 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and they did not then deserve to be called na- 
tions — are now so far in advance in their knowl- 
edge of the laws and powers of nature, their 
ability to acquire wealth; that is, to transform 
the crude stuffs of nature into things of beauty 
and usefulness, and provide sanitary conditions, 
comfort, and better facilities in every respect 
for living one's life. Let me illustrate: 

Twenty years ago, when I arrived in Peking, 
it was the custom of the city authorities to clean 
the city sewers in the springtime. These sewers 
were great underground waterways, which re- 
ceived not only the washings from the streets, 
but from the stables, the homes, the kitchens, 
and the closets; and because the city was so 
level and without a water system, and as there 
was but little rain except during the months of 
July, August, and September, there was no way 
of flushing the sewers. Everything that washed 
into them from September till April or May 
remained there, decayed, and formed a stench 
that words fail to describe. One of the main 
sewers passed through our mission compound, 
opening into the canal just outside of the back 
gate of the mission and the front gate of the 
Peking University; and as we were constantly 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 185 

passing from one to the other we had occasion 
to notice it more, perhaps, than others would, 
though every one who lived in Peking in those 
days will confirm what I am now writing. 

During the months of March, April, or May, 
about the time when every one is having spring 
fever, the city authorities ordered the sewers 
cleaned; and for days men with shovels and 
pails would go down into the sewers, shovel up 
or ladle up this decayed filth, and pile it up on 
the sidewalk, where it was left for days or weeks 
to dry. The streets at that time were all dirt 
roads. Much of this that had washed into the 
sewer had washed off the street; it was there- 
fore used, as soon as it was sufficiently dry, to 
build up the street again. That, in a single sea- 
son, would have a tendency to destroy the sani- 
tary conditions of the city. But when we re^ 
member that this same process has been gone 
through every spring for more than a thousand 
years, we will understand that most of the sur- 
face soil, which is mud and steam in the hot, 
rainy months of July and August, and blows 
about as dust during at least eight months of 
the other ten, is not conducive to good sanitary 
conditions. 



186 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

But this is not all. I have referred to the 
fact that Peking was without a water system 
with which to flush her sewers. Her only water 
system was a well, a wheel-barrow, or a mule- 
cart, and a man. These wells were sunk down 
through this surface-soil that was saturated 
with the filth of a dozen centuries, walled up 
with blocks of stone in such a loose way as not 
to prevent the surface-water running in; and 
while the deeper ones, from which the water 
was used constantly, obtained most of their wa- 
ter from a deep subsoil, the water in all of them 
was " bitter,* ' and this only because of the filth 
that leaked in from the top ; so that the people 
not only breathed filth in the air, but they drank 
filth in the water. 

The Chinese are very fond of fruit, of which 
they eat large quantities. They are also fond 
of melons and cucumbers, most of which they 
eat skins, seeds, and all. All the stores— fruit, 
dried fruit, grocery, and others — are open to 
the street. They are without doors or windows 
in front, in lieu of which they have movable 
boards, which are taken down during the day. 
Many of the fruit and melon venders spread 
their wares out on movable tables on the street, 



BY-PRODUCTS IN AUT 187 

or carry thern about on small platforms or tubs 
swung on tlie ends of a pole, cut in slices ready 
for sale, like the watermelons sold by the Ital- 
ians and others in our great cities. North 
China is noted for its dust storms, especially 
during the autumn, winter, and spring. The 
dust blows in clouds, settles upon the slices of 
melons and the cucumbers, clings to the fuzz 
of the peach and the apricot, and is eaten by the 
hungry and poorly-fed people because in the 
autumn fruit is cheaper than bread ; and so they 
not only breathe and drink filth, but they eat 
it as well. 

Again, the homes of most of the Chinese — 
not only in the great cities, but in the country 
as well — are hovels rather than houses. They 
are built of mud or brick, thatched with straw 
or corn-stalks, or covered with tiles. Seldom 
do they have ceilings, while the floors are of 
clay or very porous brick. One-half of the floor 
is built up a foot and a half above the other 
half, and this constitutes the bed. It is built 
of brick, with a network of flues. Under the 
front is a small fireplace, over which is a pot 
in which they do much of their cooking. They 
build their fire under the bed ; their fuel being 



188 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

weeds, cornstalks, old floor-mats, or anything 
that will bnrn. The smoke, soot, gas, dirt — all 
go up nnder the bed, cooking the food, heating 
the bricks, and then coming out into the room 
and covering the walls and rafters with soot. 
The people spit upon the floor; it sinks into 
the porous bricks; they wash their hands and 
face and their dishes, and then sprinkle the floor 
with the water, and various other fluids and 
filth find their way into the brick floors. Their 
windows are paper, which becomes torn, and 
the dust blows in ; pigs and chickens also share 
with the family the protection of the home. In- 
deed, the word for home is a pig under a roof. 
From what we have said it will be seen that 
the people — the great mass of the people — 
breathe, drink, eat, and live among filth, and the 
wonder of the ages is that there are four hun- 
dred millions of Chinese to-day, and the only 
way it can be accounted for, I think, is because 
they live so much out of doors. 

Now let us grant that there is much in our 
own great cities that is not ideal ; that you can 
duplicate all that I have said about China by 
similar conditions at home; it still remains a 
fact that in China it is the rule — the govern- 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 189 

ment ; while here it is the exception and in spite 
of the government, and usually only among 
those of the first generation in America. It is 
possible here to have pure air, pure water, pure 
food, and their dirt, must be within their own 
doors ; for as soon as their feet touch the brick 
or cement sidewalk they touch cleanliness, which 
in a generation at least banishes dirt from the 
home. 

But the most serious result of this dirt is 
not its influence upon the individual, but its in- 
fluence upon the public and upon the world. 
Every few years there breaks out in these great 
filthy Oriental cities a plag-ue which strikes ter- 
ror to the hearts not only of the people among 
whom it starts, but in the hearts of those also 
at the remotest ends of the earth. Cholera, bu- 
bonic and pneumonic plague, dengue, beriberi, 
and others. Do we ever ask ourselves why all 
these plagues take their rise in Asia! And do 
we try to answer that why? One word tells the 
tale. It is dirt. Nay, a better word is filth ; for 
dirt does not express the filthiness of Asiatic 
dirt. It can not be expressed in the English lan- 
guage; for the English language, since it has 
been a language, has never lived long among 



190 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

such Tsang. That is the word that expresses 
it — Tsang. 

There is but one remedy for this dirt, and 
that remedy is the gospel. Wherever the gospel 
has gone, cleanliness has gone, and up to the 
present the world has never produced a clean 
city where the influences of the gospel have not 
gone. If I did not believe in foreign missions 
for any religious reasons, I would believe in 
and support them for the sanitary influence they 
have had upon the world. A member of a great 
bathtub manufacturing firm told me at the Du- 
quesne Club in Pittsburgh recently that since 
the missionaries have gone to China they are 
shipping thousands of bathtubs to that great 
empire. 

When any one of these plagues, such as 
cholera, strikes a city or a village the people are 
in terror. The same is true of the people in 
India as in China. At six o'clock all are well. 
At seven a father comes out with terror writ- 
ten on his face and announces : 

1 'My son is dead." 

"What disease?" some one asks. 

"That disease," he replies, afraid to say 
the word "cholera;" or, if he be a Hindoo, he 



BY-PRODUCTS IN ART 191 

answers, ''The disease of the wind," for they 
think the wind brings it. 

In a few moments some one annonnces an- 
other death in another part of the city, and by- 
nightfall there may be a hnndred people fall 
victims to the sconrge. 

In a village near Pei-tai-ho, our snmmer re- 
sort of North China, the cholera appeared. The 
people worshiped their gods. They, as a final 
resort, celebrated the New Year's festival in 
August, to try to deceive the cholera god and 
persuade him that he had struck the wrong time 
of the year. They did everything but clean the 
wells and clean up the village. The cholera god 
was not deceived. They finally decided to es- 
cort the god over to our foreign settlement. 
This they did during the night. An English 
gentleman who had come from Tangshan ill a 
day or two before died the next morning; the 
cholera had had its run in the village, and they 
persuaded themselves that, having gotten a for- 
eign victim, he was satisfied. 

In the spring of 1897 two members of the 
senior class of the Peking University, at the 
close of the summer term, went to spend their 
vacation preaching at a church up outside the 



192 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Great Wall. They passed the summer quietly 
and pleasantly, and with renewed health and 
vigor at the beginning of September started 
back to Peking. They walked most of the way, 
and when they reached the city gate were tired 
and hungry. Not having heard any rumors 
of plague in the city, they purchased some 
peaches from a fruit-vender inside the city gate. 
These they ate, at once fell ill, and one of them 
died that night, and the other the following 
morning. 

I repeat here that the health of the world 
depends upon the spread of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ. If any one is disposed to question this 
and say that it is simply the progress of civiliza- 
tion, I ask, Why is it that civilization— the civ- 
ilization of cleanliness — has gone only with the 
gospel, or where the gospel has gone? and it 
remains for them to answer the question oh 
some other hypothesis. 



CHAPTEE XIV 

BY-PRODUCTS IN REFLEX INFLUENCE 

.One evening I was going on the trolley from 
Bramford, Conn., where I had been giving a 
lecture, to New Haven, where I expected to 
take the midnight train for Albany. 

On the same car with me was a man with 
abdominal capacity sufficient for a brace of 
aldermen. We were soon engaged in conver- 
sation, and it was not long until he wanted to 
know where I had been. 

"I have just come from Bramford, ,, I in- 
formed him. 

"In business?" he said, interrogatively. 

"No; I was giving a lecture," I answered. 

"What subject?" he asked. 

"China," I replied. 

"Been to China?" he again said, with a 
rising inflection. 

"Yes; I have been there sixteen years," I 
informed him. 

' ' Gee ! how could you live among the Chinks 
that length of time?" he exclaimed. 

13 193 



194 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Teaching," I replied. 

"Government school ?" again interroga- 
tively. 

"Methodist school," said I, indicatively. 

"What, missionary?" again with surprise. 

"Sort of," I replied. 

"Well, you know I think a man is wasting 
his time going over there to convert those 
heathen," he volunteered. 

1 ' Ah, indeed ! You converted ? " I asked. 

"Not much," he answered. 

"What business!" I inquired. 

"Liquor," he replied. 

"Saloon?" interrogatively. 

"Yes," sheepishly. 

"Well, you know I think a man is wasting 
his time trying to make paupers and heathen 
out of American boys," I said. 

He did not answer for awhile; then: "Do 
you think all those Chinese will be lost if they 
do not become Christians?" 

"I hope not," I replied. 

"Well, if they can be saved without being 
Christians, what is the use of spending so much 
money going over to convert them?" he in- 
quired, as though he had me cornered. 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 195 

"How much do you spend annually to get 
them converted?" I asked. 

"Nothing," he replied; "but that is dodg- 
ing the question." 

"You can go from Boston to New York by 
way of Buffalo, can't you!" I asked. 

"Yes," he replied; "but it is a long way 
around. ' ' 

"You can go from Bramford to New Haven 
by road wagon, too; can't you?" 

"Yes; but it is not very comfortable," he 
answered. 

"A bit slow, too; isn't it?" I volunteered. 

"Sure," he replied. 

"Why do you spend so much money build- 
ing railroads and trolley lines instead of going 
by road wagon?" I asked. 

"More comfortable, more direct, quicker, 
and more sure," he replied. 

"That is what Christianity is as compared 
with any other religion?" I suggested. 

"But they do not want your religion," he 
objected. 

"On the same principle, Jesus Christ ought 
not to have come to the world. The world did 
not want Him. It had no place for Him — no 



196 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

decent place for Him to be born, no house for 
Him to live in, no pillow for His head, and only 
a cross on which to die. He did not wait till 
the world wanted Him. He came because the 
world needed Him." 

"Well, you know," he said, "I think the 
Church is losing its hold on the big men even 
here in America." 

"Do you think so?" I asked. 

"I think so," he added. "At least most of 
the men I know do not go to church." 

"Did they ever go?" I asked. 

"Not much, I suppose," he answered. 

"Then the Church never had any hold on 
them to lose; did it?" I inquired. 

"Well, perhaps not," he answered; "but do 
you think that the biggest, wealthiest, and most 
influential men in America take much interest 
in Church work?" 

"I have just, been attending a number of 
laymen's missionary conventions," I replied. 
"At a missionary dinner given for men in De- 
troit we had twelve hundred men present. 
Then we went to Syracuse, N. Y., where we 
had fourteen hundred men at a similar dinner. 
At Schenectady we had twelve hundred. At the 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 197 

Astoria Hotel in New York we had eighteen 
hundred of the most influential men in New 
York at a three-dollar dinner on the night of 
the worst blizzard I have ever been out in." 

"That 's all right," he answered; "but were 
those among the most influential men in New 
York?" he asked. 

"That is a pretty hard question to answer 
in so many words," I admitted. "But you 
think Christianity is losing its hold on America, 
do you?" I asked. 

"On the big men, yes," he replied. 

"The men control the sentiment of the Na- 
tion; do they not?" I asked. 

"Yes," he replied. 

1 ' The ordinary men or the influential men? ' ' 
I continued. 

"The influential men, of course," he an- 
swered. 

"Do you know about how many people there 
are in the United States at present?" I in- 
quired. 

"About ninety million," he replied. 

"And how many of those are Christians?" 
I continued. 

"You Ve got me now," he answered. 



198 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"There are about thirty- three millions," I 
explained. 

"Yes; but most of those are women and 
children," he objected. "Those are not all 
men. ' ' 

"Quite right," I admitted. "But that 
thirty-three millions, most of them women and 
children, control the sentiment of the United 
States and make it a Christian country." 

He opened his mouth as if to speak. Then 
he dropped his head as if to think. Just then 
the car began to slow up and the conductor 
called out: 

"Change for the New York, New Haven, 
and Hartford Depot, ' ' and I got up to leave for 
the train. My saloon-keeper friend offered me 
his hand, and as I took it he said, 

"Well, old man, I didn't believe much in 
missions, but you know your job all right;" 
and I took the compliment as a confession on 
his part that his argument had been answered 

As I boarded the train at New Haven there 
were a score or more of gentlemen in dinner- 
suits who got on with me. I noticed them ; but 
as I entered the train I was thinking of what 
he had said : that the Church is losing its hold 
upon the men. 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 199 

I had not had time to change my dress-coat 
after the lecture, and as I took off my overcoat 
and laid it down, one of the gentlemen sat 
down beside me. 

"Well," said he, "it was a big dinner." 

"What dinner?" I asked. 

"Weren't yon at the dinner?" he inquired, 
looking at my coat, without answering my ques- 
tion. 

"No; I have been giving a lecture up at 
Bramf ord, ' ' I explained. ' ' What dinner do you 
refer to?" 

"The dinner given to President Taft," he 
answered. 

"Where?" I inquired. 

"Here at New Haven — at Yale," he ex- 
plained. "Didn't you know about it?" 

"No; I just came down from Albany this 
evening." I answered, trying to justify my ig- 
norance of such an event. 

"Well, it was a big dinner," he went on. 
"There were a lot of men there." 

"How many?" I inquired, with as much in- 
terest as I could summon. 

' ' Eleven hundred ! " he answered, and looked 
at me as though he expected me to be aston- 
ished. 



200 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

I was not a particle surprised. I said to my- 
self: " Twelve hundred at Detroit, fourteen 
hundred at Syracuse, twelve hundred at Sche- 
nectady, where they have scarcely any students 
in college to draw from, and no Bob Taft, son 
of the President, as they have at Yale, and 
eighteen hundred at a three-dollar dinner in an 
awful blizzard"— it all ran through my mind 
in less time than I can write it ; and all these at 
laymen's missionary dinners — and I looked at 
him calmly and asked, 

"Could any one go that wanted to?" 

"Could if he had a ticket," he replied. 

1 ' College students and all ? " I continued. 

"Certainly," he answered. 

"And men from all the surrounding coun- 
try?" I went on. 

"We are all from out of town?" he an- 
swered, by way of explanation. 

"Yes, a good big dinner," I admitted, re- 
membering that comparisons are always odious 
to the fellow on whom they reflect. But I could 
not forget our laymen's dinners, nor could I 
help silently rejoicing that the Master draws 
better than the President. Not for a moment 
did my thoughts reflect upon the President. 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 201 

No one would rejoice more than I at the popu- 
larity of the man who is using all his influence 
to bring about among the governments the 
peace the Master taught. But I went to sleep 
that night with a glad heart. 

The next morning, when I boarded the train 
at Albany to go up to Saratoga Springs, my 
friend Fred B. Fisher, of Boston, came and sat 
down beside me. 

"Well, Headland, we had a big time in Bos- 
ton last night," was his first remark. 

"What was it!" I asked. 

"A dinner given to Chapman and Alexan- 
der," he replied. 

"The revivalists!" I asked. 

"Yes," he answered. 

"Ah! Is old Unitarian Boston giving din- 
ners to revivalists in these days ! " I exclaimed. 

"Yes; we had a big time," he repeated. 

"How many were present !" I asked. 

"Four thousand people," he replied. 

"What ! Four thousand people to meet two 
revivalists!" I exclaimed. "Why, they only 
had eleven hundred last night at a dinner in 
honor of President Taft at Yale." 

"Oh, well," exclaimed Fisher, "Taft may 



202 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

be President of the United States, but Jesus 
Christ is King ! ' ' And I could not but wish that 
my saloon friend of the trolley car and every 
one else who thinks that the gospel is losing its 
hold upon the men could have heard Fisher's 
bass voice ring out the words above the roar 
of the railroad train, "Jesus Christ is King!" 

I then began to reflect upon some of the in- 
cidents which happened during our laymen's 
campaign which were themselves by-products 
of missions in their reflex influence upon the 
home Church or Churches. It is a well-known 
fact that missions, or the call of the world, is 
about the only subject upon which all the 
Churches can unite. But call a general mis- 
sionary rally, and every Church — Presbyte- 
rian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Lutheran, 
Christian, Methodist, and Episcopalian — are all 
ready to join forces. 

At the Syracuse convention all the denomi- 
nations were represented, and all joined in 
with an equal zeal. Among those who were 
present there were two young Episcopalian 
rectors. They were both enthusiastic. With 
beaming face one of them said to me, 

"What a pity we were ever divided!" 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 203 

And as I looked at his black cloth, clean 
white linen, and sparkling eyes, I conld not but 
echo, 

''What a pity!" And as I gazed at them 
I continued: "Here we are all together. Yon 
Episcopalians are the cream, and we Methodist 
Episcopalians are the milk. The cream is a 
good deal richer than the milk, but there is a 
good deal more milk than there is cream — what 
a pity we were ever skimmed ! ' ' 

Is n't it a misfortune that we are not all go- 
ing as one great moral and spiritual army, knee 
to knee and shoulder to shoulder, with the 
sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith 
fighting the devil and the dark, non-Christian 
world in the interests of truth and the light of 
the gospel of Jesus Christ, instead of focusing 
our minds on our own little denominational dif- 
ferences ? 

What would you think of a lot of neighbor- 
ing farmers who, when their fields were ripe 
unto the harvest, instead of gathering in the 
golden grain, sat about discussing their boun- 
dary lines, while the rich harvest rotted on the 
stalks % When we come home from the mission 
fields, where we have divided up our territory 



204 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and united our educational forces, and find a 
half dozen little Churches in a village where 
there ought to be only one, or at most two, and 
as many half-supported pastors discussing 
their denominational differences, it often seems 
to us that, while the rich harvest of the world 
is waiting for reapers, we at home are going 
about, wasting much of our time tinkering our 
line fences. 

I have no disposition to complain of our 
Protestant Churches. But think, if you can, 
from the names of our Protestant Churches, of 
a single one that is built upon any great saving 
principle or doctrine. Presbyterian — a Church 
where presbyters or elders have an important 
influence in the government, but whose doc- 
trines of salvation are practically the same as 
those of the Congregationalist, who " wants to 
be his own pope, his own priest, his own bishop, 
his own presiding elder, his own preacher, and 
his own boss." Or like that of the Baptist, 
which is built upon one single rite, which the 
greatest of the apostles would not administer, 
but left to some less important functionary. 
Episcopalian — a Church governed by a bishop. 
Methodist Episcopalian — a Church whose 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 205 

founder was never anything but an Episcopa- 
lian on fire with an evangelistic spirit; and so 
on to the end. Any two of these Churches conld 
be trusted with the spiritual interests of any 
village of two or three thousand people. 

Another interesting incident in the laymen 's 
campaign was at Dayton, Ohio. I expected a 
good big meeting, but was hardly prepared for 
what I found. I knew that Dayton was a city 
of less than a hundred thousand people, and I 
hoped that there might be a thousand at the 
dinner. When I arrived I went to the Young- 
Men's Christian Association secretary and 
asked, 

"How many tickets have you sold for the 
dinner? " 

" Sixteen hundred and twenty," he an- 
swered, "and then we had to stop because the 
chickens refused to enter the ministry." 

That was an old chestnut that I had heard 
before; but then it struck me that this was not 
a ministerial meeting, and the chickens had no 
reason to object on that score ; and so I said, 

"Why did n't you persuade the chickens that 
it was a lay movement, and they would have 
given their necks to be in it?" 



206 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

But there was no occasion for having more 
present, for the largest church in the city was 
far too small to hold the people who crowded 
to the meetings. 

At the close of the meeting in St. Louis, Mr. 
Campbell White asked that any of the men who 
wanted to do something worth while should 
meet him in the church parlors. There were 
about twenty-five or thirty men present — cer- 
tainly among the most influential men of the 
city. Mr. White told them he wanted to estab- 
lish a 

Four-Squaee League, 
the principal features of the constitution of 
which were that each person who joined it would 
pledge himself to give into four figures, one 
'thousand dollars per year or more, to foreign 
missions, to get three others to join him, to 
quadruple his own gifts to missions, and to 
quadruple the gifts of his Church. 

Hardly had Mr. White finished reading this 
constitution when a man in the rear of the 
audience arose and said: 

"Mr. White, I have been thinking of some- 
thing of this kind, though I did not have the 
genius to express it. I want you to put my 
name down as the first member of this league." 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 207 

Three others asked that Mr. White would 
put their names down. Then a gentleman sit- 
ting in the front row said in a quiet way, 

"Mr. White, put my name down." He was 
a friend of Mr. White, who in surprise said: 

"Why, that is more than you have been 
giving for missions, is it not?" 

"I never gave a thousand cents before," he 
answered. 

Another gentleman arose and said: 

"Mr. White, I do not feel able to give a 
thousand dollars, but I would like to give five 
hundred dollars, and I would like to organize 
our whole Church, getting each person to> give 
$500, $250, $100, $50, or $25, and have them 
all members of this league." 

"No, no;" they said, "let us keep it four- 
square, not allowing any one to become a mem- 
ber unless he gives into four figures." 

' ' All right, ' ' he said ; l ' put my name down. ' ' 

Two others, without rising from their chairs, 
said, "Put my name down." 

Then a gentleman to the left rose quietly 
and said : 

"When I was a boy my father got me a po- 
sition in a bank at ten dollars a week. My 
father left me the heritage of a good name. I 



208 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

now happen to be president of the Bank of Com- 
merce. Put my name down." 

The men said to me afterward, "You do not 

know what it means when E , the president 

of the Bank of Commerce, talks like that among 
this group of men." 

They continued to join until there were nine 
members out of that group of twenty-five or 
thirty men. 

E arose quietly and said: "We ought 

to have ten men out of this bunch. I have a 
boy. He is only fifteen, but he will grow. Put 
his name down." 

The next day these ten men had a luncheon 
together, and this same man brought the names 
of his two brothers, I was told, and offered them 
as members. Is the Church losing its hold upon 
the influential men? 

In arranging the seventy-five cities in which 
they proposed to hold conventions, no attention 
was given to Grand Junction, Colo., a little 
town on the west slope of the Rockies, half way 
between Denver and Salt Lake City. Now, 
Grand Junction is an enterprising place. A 
place where the men drain the mountain streams 
into their orchards and raise apples by the car- 



REFLEX INFLUENCE 209 

load ; where they put oil-stoves out if they fear 
a frost, and refuse to allow nature to nip their 
buds. 

When the people of Grand Junction heard 
that there were to be seventy-five great lay- 
men's conventions held in as many cities across 
the continent, in their own words, they "got 
busy." They wrote Mr. White, 

"We want a convention. ' ' 

Mr. White wrote back: 

"We have arranged for all the conventions 
we can furnish speakers for. It will be im- 
possible to give you one." 

They wrote back: 

"We are going to have a convention. We 
will arrange for it, and you stop off three or 
four speakers on their way from Denver to 
Salt Lake City." 

It was done. I was one of the speakers. 
The town only had some two thousand people 
at that time; but when we arrived at the hall 
there were present at the dinner five hundred 
men and one woman. 

"How is this," I asked, as I sat down at the 
table, "you have a woman present at this lay- 
men's dinner?" 

14 



210 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"Well," they explained, "this woman rode 
one whole day on horseback and another whole 
day in a stage to get here. When she arrived 
we said to her: 

" 'This is not a meeting for women. This 
is for men only.' 

" 'Do n't you worry,' she replied, 'when this 
meeting opens I '11 be there.' " 

And she was there. She was introduced to 
that body of five hundred men, and she sat in 
the front row in the gallery at every meeting, 
taking notes, that she might go back and arouse 
an interest in all the members of her Church 
in the great work of missions throughout the 
world. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE GOSPEL AND THE WORLD'S PEACE 

I like to discuss world-problems with men who 
know, or with men who onght to know. For 
instance, I should like to have discussed war 
with a man like Napoleon. He was such a 
bloody brute. Not a great man, but a great 
butcher. He knew how to win a battle. Just 
decide to win at all hazards, then keep out of 
danger yourself, and have no concern how many 
lives you sacrifice. He thought, as a great many 
people think, that "Providence is on the side 
of the heavy artillery. ' ' Now, it is a fact that, 
other things being equal, the side that has the 
heavy artillery is the most likely to win. But 
the fact that I win in one particular battle is 
no evidence that Providence is on my side ; nor 
is the fact that you lose any evidence that 
Providence is against you. The danger with 
most of us is in our interpretation of Provi- 
dence. We too often take it that Providence 
is with us when we succeed, and against us when 
we fail. 

211 



212 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

To have discussed war with Washington 
would have been a very different matter. He 
had a different view of life. His views of suc- 
cess were unlike those of Napoleon, and his 
opinion of Providence was not that of a disin- 
terested being who was on the side of the heavy 
artillery, regardless of the justice of the cause. 

I was invited to give a talk to the Twentieth 
Century Club recently in Boston. After the 
luncheon I had a talk with Nathan Haskell Dole, 
a prominent literary man of New England. 
During the conversation I said, 

' ' I fancy that the great battles of the future 
will most likely be fought at sea." 

"I doubt if there will be any great battles 
of the future, ' ' he remarked. 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

1 ' In my judgment, ' ' he returned, ' ' within the 
next ten years we will have all our international 
difficulties settled by arbitration." 

"I wish I could be as sanguine," I said. 
"But come to think of it, war is only interna- 
tional fisticuffing. If any of us members of this 
club had any differences we would settle them 
neither with our fists nor with arms. We would 
talk the matter over and settle them by mutual 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 213 

concession and agreement. In this age, in pri- 
vate life, it is only the uncultured, uneducated 
bum who is ready to shed his coat and go in to 
settle his private differences with his fists." 

"Do you think so?" he said. 

"lam sure of it, " I answered. ' ' Nationally 
the world is not quite up to its individual cul- 
ture. Twenty years ago such prize-fighters as 
were popular in America could find a place 
almost anywhere to fight. Now it is prac- 
tically impossible to find a place in the civilized 
world where the law will allow them to make 
a ring." 

"You mean in the Christian world," he said. 

"It is all the same," I answered. "I con- 
sider that one of the greatest triumphs of our 
age — to have stopped prize-fighting — and one 
of the greatest steps toward international 
peace." 

"And you say you think that nationally we 
are not quite up to our sentiment individually?" 
he continued. 

"Certainly," I answered. "The world 
cared nothing for Japan until she knocked out 
China and Eussia, and then we began to regard 
her as a first-class power. I felt like regarding 



214 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

her as a first-class bully, and for some time, I 
confess, I looked upon Japan as being in the 
John L. Sullivan state of national existence — a 
national fisticuff er — and it remains to be proven 
whether she is or not. Both in the case of China 
and Russia she seemed to be spoiling for a fight. 
But that was not what I was about to say. At 
the present time the world has decided against 
individual fisticuffing, and there are good pros- 
pects of its deciding against international fisti- 
cuffing as well. And why not? The nation is 
only a combination of individuals ; and there is 
no reason why we should not soon rise as high 
in National as in individual sentiment. The 
prospects are that within the next ten years we 
will." 

"But do you think all the nations are up to 
this high standard?" he asked. 

"All but two," I answered. 

"And which two are those?" he inquired. 

"I do not care to name them," I replied; 
"but it would not require much guessing to dis- 
cover which two rulers and peoples are the ones 
who seem to be most spoiling for a fight." 

1 ' Then you think that there are better meth- 
ods of settling international difficulties than by 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 215 

fighting, and that these methods are practical?" 
he said. 

" Certainly," I answered. "That is a per- 
fectly sane idea of Jesus Christ when He said, 
'If he strike yon on the right cheek, turn the 
other.'" 

"How?" he asked. 

"Two dogs can't fight if one won't, fight," 
I answered. 

■ ' Quite right, ' ' he replied ; "but it leaves the 
one looking awfully like a coward. ' ' 

"To those who are looking for cowards," 
I replied. "But it is better for both yourself 
and posterity to go off with a whole head and 
propagate yourself, than to be chewed up and 
maimed." 

"But the other fellow goes and propagates 
himself too," he urged. 

' ' Quite right, ' ' I replied ; ' ' but he that taketh 
up the sword shall perish with the sword." 

"Yes; but do you believe that?" he an- 
swered. 

"Nothing more true in history," I replied. 
"It does not mean that the man who takes up 
the sword will not conquer his opponent at that 
particular time; but the man who takes up the 



216 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

sword often enough will ultimately perish with 
the sword. All history testifies to that fact. Of 
the ancient peoples who started out together 
only two remain — the Chinese and the Jew. 
They loved peace. They never fought except 
on strong provocation. The Assyrians, the 
Babylonians, the Medians, Persians, Egyptians, 
the Macedonians, even the Greeks and Romans 
who took up the sword perished with the sword, 
while the Chinese and the Jew have gone 
calmly on." 

"It does look as though a long perspective 
is in favor of peace," he remarked; "but the 
Jew is a man without a country." 

"But he lives. He has not perished. He 
loved peace, and he has been preserved. He 
rejected Jesus Christ, and he has been a man 
without a country ever since," I remarked. 

"But do you believe that the rejection of 
Jesus Christ has left him as a man without a 
country?" he asked. 

"The man with the best type of religion is 
the man who rules the world," I said, without 
answering his question. 

"Another thing," I continued. "He that 
taketh up the dreadnaught shall perish with the 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 217 

dreadnauglit. There is nothing more sane than 
this. It has always been true that he who fights 
long enough will alivays find some one who can 
fight better than he can; and then it is all up 
with him. Even Jim Jeffries will find his Jack 
Johnson. He who knocks somebody down will 
always find somebody or his sympathizers to 
knock him down; but he who 1 helps somebody 
up will always find somebody who is anxious 
to help him up higher." 

"It sounds very sane to hear you talk that 
way," he remarked. "I had never thought of 
it in that light before, and I confess that it does 
seem that the only safe thing for permanent 
preservation is permanent peace. Then you 
would not be in favor of the Chinese arming 
themselves to try to withstand the powers of 
Europe," he remarked. 

"If I were the adviser to the Chinese Gov- 
ernment," I replied, "I would urge them never 
to build a navy and never to equip an army. 
I would say to the European Powers: 'You 
pretend to believe in Christianity, and you pre- 
tend to believe in peace. You want me to con- 
duct a great educational, social, and business 
reform. To do this will require a vast outlay, 



218 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and I will not have either the time or the funds 
to carry on such an internal reform and at the 
same time prepare to resist the incursions of 
those who have been studying warlike methods 
for centuries. I will conduct my internal re- 
form, and I will trust your principles of justice 
and fair play to see that I am protected while 
doing it.' " 

"But, would that be safe?" he asked. 

"The only way to find out whether it was 
safe," I replied, "would be to test it. It would 
be right, and it is almost always safe to do 
right; is it not?" I asked, with a smile. "Be- 
sides, the Chinese are not a warlike people." 

"That is contrary to the general opinion 
about the Chinese ; is it not ? " he asked. ' ' They 
are usually supposed to be a yellow peril." 

1 ' Only by those who do not know, ' ' I replied. 
"Those who understand the Chinese character 
and the history of the people know that they 
have never fought a great battle during their 
whole history. They do not believe in fighting, 
in war, nor in soldiers. Twenty years ago they 
did not even have police on their streets. Every 
man was a policeman. If two men got into a 
scrap, the crowd would gather around, several 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 219 

men would get hold of the two who were fight- 
ing — if pulling hair and scratching can be called 
fighting; for the Chinese never learned the 
J) easily art of self-defense — and they would 
pull them apart, lead them in opposite direc- 
tions, allowing them to- revile each other, their 
friends, relatives, and ancestors, until their 
anger was exhausted or their spite satisfied, and 
then send each in his own direction. In divid- 
ing up the people they say: 

"The highest-grade man is the scholar, 

i ' The second-grade man is the farmer 
(he is a producer), 

"The third-grade man is the laborer 
(he is also a producer), 

"The fourth-grade man is the merchant 
(he is only an exchanger), 

1 i The fifth-grade man is the soldier 
(he is a destroyer) ; 
and they say, 'Hao jen pu tang ping 9 — ' A good 
man will not be a soldier.' They also say, 'Jen 
tang ping shih ju tieh ta ting' — 'A man made 
into a soldier is like a piece of iron made into 
a nail ; ' it is the last thing you can make of him. 
Now, a people who crystallize their sentiments 
about the soldier into such statements as that 



220 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

will never, in my judgment, be a peril, except in 
the arts of peace." 

"You say the Chinese have never been a 
fighting people; but did not the Mongols over- 
run Europe?" he asked. 

"Yes, the Mongols; but not the Chinese. It 
took the Mongols one hundred years to conquer 
the Chinese by the arts of war. The Chinese 
then set to work to conquer them by the arts 
of peace. They quietly began to eat and digest 
them, and in eighty years' time there was no 
Mongol language at court, no Mongol literature, 
no Mongol society, and the descendants of the 
Great Khan, whom Marco Polo wrote about in 
such glowing terms, were a race of emasculated 
rulers whom the Chinese vomited back on their 
Mongol plains and deserts, a better educated, 
a more civilized, but a less warlike people. 

' ' The same is true of the Manchus. It took 
the Manchus more than a hundred years to con- 
quer the Chinese, and indeed there is no more 
thrilling chapter in all history than the conquest 
of the Chinese by their present rulers; nor is 
there any greater evidence of the Chinese be- 
ing anything but a warlike people than that 
same episode. It is as follows : 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 221 

" 'Two Manchu tribes were engaged in a 
dispute which continued through so many years 
that the Ming Emperor decided that it should 
cease. He therefore took sides with one tribe 
and settled the dispute. The son of the chief 
against whom the emperor decided — then a 
mere boy — said to himself, "I will punish that 
Ming Emperor when I become a man. ' ' When 
he reached the years of maturity, at the head 
of his tribe, with one hundred and fifty men, he 
conquered his father's adversary. He then 
went from one tribe to another until all Man- 
churia was under his leadership. Then he un- 
dertook to conquer Mongolia, and it was not 
long until he had an army of two hundred and 
fifty thousand men at his back. He then started 
for the Ming dynasty; but the great wall kept 
him out, and it was not until he and his son 
had passed away that his grandson was placed 
upon the throne. 

' ' ' The dynasty against which he fought was 
the Ming — purely Chinese — and one can hardly 
imagine a great, warlike people, a people who 
are likely to be a yellow peril with a sword, to 
have allowed themselves to have been con- 
quered in that way and to have had forced upon 



222 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

them the world-despised queue ; for the queue is 
a Manchu, and not a Chinese, appendage. They 
were conquered by the sword ; but again by the 
arts of peace they set about conquering their 
conquerors. They gave them the Chinese lan- 
guage, so that the Manchu language in China is 
practically a thing of the past. They gave them 
Chinese literature. They made them promise 
never to interfere with the Chinese social cus- 
toms, and especially the habits of the women. 
And at the present time, in the history of the 
nations and of the world, who ever thinks of 
considering the Manchus? People sometimes 
speak of the Manchus ruling China, and that is 
about all the world knows of them. The Man- 
chus are more civilized, more learned, more ar- 
tistic, more cultured, more refined than they 
were when they conquered their conquerors ; it 
is only fair to say they are now conquered by 
the arts of peace, and are themselves so emas- 
culated as a dynasty of rulers that only one 
child has been born to the last three emperors — 
none to the last two — and a woman has held the 
reigns of government for the past forty-seven 
years. And it may be interesting to give a 
chapter on her life; for no greater woman ap- 



THE WORLD'S PEACE 223 

peared in the world during the nineteenth cen- 
tury than Tzu Hsi — the great empress dowager 
of China. 

' ' ' The peace of the world, when it conies — 
and it is far on the way — will be a by-product 
of the gospel and of missions.' " 



CHAPTER XVI 

SOME BY-PRODUCTS IN INDIVIDUAL 
GOVERNMENT 

In 1894 the Christian women from England and 
America and the Christian women of China de- 
cided to give a present to the late empress 
dowager on her sixtieth birthday. After think- 
ing of various things, they decided to give her 
a New Testament. Now, in order to appreciate 
the importance of this gift it will be necessary 
to know something of the early history of this 
great woman. 

The empress dowager was born in a little 
home in Peking, of poor but well-connected par- 
entage, about the year 1834. At sixteen years 
of age she was taken into the palace and made 
the concubine of the Emperor Hsien Feng, a 
position that no Manchu family would choose 
for their daughter ; for of the hundreds of girls 
that enter the palace in this capacity scarcely 
any of them are ever heard of again. 

Unlike most of the concubines, however, this 

224 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 225 

girl began to study, taught by the eunuchs ; and 
she continued at her books until she could read 
the classical language as well as many of the 
officials, and wield her brush in writing the ideo- 
graphs so well that the character for "long 
life" or "happiness" written by her hand and 
presented to an official is preserved as an heir- 
loom in his family. She then devoted herself to 
pictorial art, and her name will go down in His- 
tory and appear in the art-encyclopedias with 
the name of all the great artists of her dynasty. 

Her devotion to her studies, her politeness 
to her superiors, and her general character and 
conduct led her to be selected from the hun- 
dreds of her associates as the "first concubine. ' ' 
The empress was the second wife of the em- 
peror — his first wife having died. She was not 
a strong character; she was childless, and the 
first concubine having given birth to a son was 
raised to the position of wife and soon began 
to take a leading place in her husband's favor 
as well as in the influence of the court. 

Her husband died when her son was three 
years old, and in spite of much opposition on 
the part of certain of the princes she contrived 
to have her son placed upon the throne and her- 



226 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

self made regent during his minority, which 
gave her fifteen years of rule over all China. 
During these years she was busy also with other 
matters. She contrived to have her younger 
sister married to the younger brother of the 
emperor, her husband, that in this way she 
might provide an heir for the throne from her 
own family in case of the death of her son. 

Her son died just as he reached his majority, 
and on the night of his death she had her sis- 
ter's oldest son, a lad of three years, brought 
into the palace ; and the next morning, when she 
announced the death of her son she proclaimed 
her nephew as his successor, with herself as 
regent again during his minority. This gave 
her another tenure of fifteen years or more as 
ruler over all China. And when she was about 
to die she had her grand-nephew, this same sis- 
ter's grandson, brought into the palace and saw 
to it that he was established upon the throne be- 
fore she took her departure. We have, there- 
fore, in the empress dowager the spectacle of a 
little girl, born in a humble home, becoming the 
concubine of an emperor, the wife of an em- 
peror, the mother of an emperor, the maker of 
two emperors, the regent for two emperors, and 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 227 

the ruler of all China for the space of forty- 
seven years in a country where women are sup- 
posed to have no power. Discover, if you can, 
another woman who lived during the nineteenth 
century with such an extraordinary career ! 

It was this woman to whom the Christian 
women from England and America and the 
Christian women of China decided to give a 
birthday present on the event of the most im- 
portant birthday, the 60th, in the life of a Chi- 
nese monarch. 

The ladies considered the matter carefully, 
and after thinking of various things they de- 
cided to give her a copy of the New Testament. 
They made new type with which to print it. 
They printed it on the best quality of foreign 
paper in the best style of the printer's art. 
They bound it in silver — embossed bamboo pat- 
tern—enclosed it in a silver box ; this, again, in 
a red plush box; this, in turn, in a beautifully 
carved teak wood box, and this, finally, in an or- 
dinary pine box. They sent it to the British 
and American ministers, requesting them to 
send it to the foreign office, and them to send 
it to the empress dowager. 

Now, there was a lot of ceremony about that. 



228 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

But the Chinese love ceremony. Sir Robert 
Hart tells a story which illustrates how the Chi- 
nese love ceremony. He says that soon after he 
went to China he was calling upon a Chinese 
official. He sat bolt upright upon his chair. 
A Chinese official never leans to one side or the 
other when on official business. He reached 
down, took a roll of thin paper out of his boot, 
quietly unrolled one sheet, rolled the rest up 
slowly and put it into his boot again. He then 
used this sheet as a handkerchief, passed it to 
his servant, who received it in both hands, and 
in a dignified way he went and deposited it in 
the paper-basket. I need not say what one can 
not do with dignity and ceremony in China. 

We can imagine this ordinary pine box com- 
ing into the palace. It does not look promising, 
and there are some who might think that it 
would be opened before it reached her majesty. 
They do not know what attention the empress 
dowager gave to all her domestic and private 
affairs if they think so. Her presents were 
opened in her presence, and woe betide the per- 
son who took liberty with her affairs. It may 
not look promising; but, like all Chinese, she 
did not judge the inside from the appearance 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 229 

of the outside. The Chinese do everything the 
opposite of what we do. 

Go down street in any of onr great cities, 
and yon will find all the most beautiful things in 
the show windows. Not so in China. I had the 
pleasure of entertaining Mr. William Jennings 
Bryan in Peking when he was making his trip 
around the world. And let me say just here that 
Mr. Bryan visited the missions, studied mission 
work, and when he returned to America was 
capable of talking intelligently about mission- 
ary enterprises. 

I had written a guide-book to Peking, and 
I offered to show him about the city. As we 
were going down Liu Li Chang, the great book 
and curio street, I stopped before one of the 
stores and remarked, 

"We will go in here." 

"That is a junk shop, isn't it?" he asked. 

"Not entirely," I answered, "though there 
may be some junk in it." 

We entered. There was not a single piece 
of good ware in the front room. We went into 
the next room back, where we found some fairly 
good things. The next room back of that had 
some very good things; but all his very best 



230 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

goods were locked up in a little cubbyhole at 
the very rear of his premises, the opposite of 
what you would find it in America. 

The empress dowager has this pine box 
opened, and in it she finds a beautifully-carved 
teak-wood box, carved the same as the frame of 
her portrait now in the Smithsonian Institution 
in Washington. 

When this box was opened she found within 
it a red plush box. Eed is the sign of happiness 
in China. The bride's dress is red. The chair 
in which she rides is red. All your presents at 
New Year's time are wrapped in red paper and 
tied with a red string. Everything that wishes 
one happiness is red; and hence these ladies 
had silently wished the empress dowager happi- 
ness on her sixtieth birthday by this red box. 

This, in turn, was opened, and in it she found 
a silver box. The basis of our monetary system 
is gold ; that of the Chinese is silver ; hence the 
silver box. And when she opened that she 
found within it the Word of God bound up in 
silver. 

I do not know what influence that New Tes- 
tament had upon the empress dowager, but that 
same day the boy emperor, her nephew, whom 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 231 

she had placed upon the throne, sent a ennnch 
to the American Bible Society and bought an 
Old and New Testament such as were being sold 
to his people. 

One ought to know something about the de- 
velopment of this boy, for he was as much of 
a genius in his way as his aunt. Taken out of 
a big beautiful world at three and a half years 
of age, where he had other children to play with, 
and where he could go about at will, into a little 
world, a half square mile in size, of brick-paved 
earth, surrounded by three great walls, what 
hope was there of his ever learning anything 
either about the world or about the people he 
was to govern! Shut up in the palace with 
thousands of eunuchs and concubines, maid- 
servants and the two dowager empresses, the 
only male figure in the palace, not a child to 
play with, what hope was there for the lad? 

The eunuchs went out and brought him Chi- 
nese toys. These he did not like. They then 
found a foreign store on Legation Street, and 
they purchased some foreign toys, which, by 
being wound up, would go of their own energy. 
That was what he wanted — something that 
would move. As he grew older they bought him 



232 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

other toys, more suited to his age — Swiss 
watches and cuckoo clocks. I went through his 
palace in 1901. There was a long window on 
the south side of the room which was rilled with 
clocks from one end to the other, all ticking a 
different time. When telling this to a friend 
not long since, he remarked, 

' ' They were not there to keep time — simply 
to tick-le the emperor." 

That is what they were for — to tickle the 
emperor. There were tables about the room 
and clocks on the tables. There was a beautiful 
desk with a clock upon it. I sat down on a large 
French, plush-upholstered chair, and a music- 
box began to play in the seat of the chair ; and 
this set off an electric fan that was on the wall 
near by, which kept me cool on that hot August 
day. It was the emperor's reading chair. He 
could sit and read, and listen to the music, and 
be kept cool by the fan. The child had gotten 
all the wonderful toys of modern times into 
the palace. 

He then heard of the huo lun die, the fire- 
wheel cart, and he had a small railroad built 
along the west shore of the lotus lake in the 
palace grounds, and two small cars and an en- 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 233 

gine made in Europe, and lie could take the 
court for a ride on this newly-constructed 
merry-go-round. Then he heard of the huo lun 
chuan, and he got steam launches, which he put 
into the lotus lake and the lake at the summer 
palace ; and these he could hitch to the empress 
dowager's barge and take the court ladies for 
a ride on the lake. Then he heard of sending 
messages by a flash of lightning. That was what 
he wanted. That would move; and so he got 
the telegraph into the palace, and soon it was 
established throughout the empire. He was 
then told that it was possible to talk to a dis- 
tance of fifty or one hundred miles. I wonder 
if you remember the first time you ever heard 
that. I do, and I did not believe it. We had 
an old farmer down in Pennsylvania, and when 
they told him it was possible to talk so that 
you could be heard to a distance of fifty or a 
hundred miles, he said: 

"It can't be done. My son John kin holler 
as loud as any man in this keounty, an' he 
can't be heard more than two miles." 

Kuang Hsu was ready to believe anything 
he heard about these foreigners, and so he got 
the telephone into the palace, and now the capi- 



234 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

tal and the coast cities are cobwebbed with tele- 
phones. Then he heard of the ' ' talk-box, ' ' and 
the officials came to Peking University, bought 
our phonograph, and sent that into the palace. 
Later we sent him a cinematograph ; in a word, 
that child, taken out of this big beautiful world 
at three and a half years of age, and penned 
up inside of three great walls, moved all the 
great inventions of modern times into the 
palace. 

Then he got the New Testament. That was 
the inspiration. He began studying the Gospel 
of Luke. I know this, because my assistant 
pastor and one of my Church members were 
invited into the palace daily to talk with the 
eunuchs, and the one who stood behind the em- 
peror's chair while he studied told my friends 
that the emperor had a portion of the Gospel 
of Luke copied in large characters every day, 
which he had spread out on the table before 
him, and he added, 

"I can look over his shoulder and see what 
he is studying; it is Lu chia fu yin — the Gospel 
of Luke." 

After the emperor had studied the Gospel 
for a short time there were reports about Pe- 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 235 

king that he was going to become a Christian. 
Indeed, the eunuchs told my friends that the em- 
peror would line them up and catechise them 
as to whom they worshiped, nor would he pass 
them until they confessed that they worshiped 
J esus Christ ; while two of the court ladies told 
Mrs. Headland that the emperor said that when 
he went to the temple he did not worship the 
idols, but he worshiped Tien chu, the God of 
heaven (the Christian name for God) . 

"While the emperor was studying the Gospel 
a eunuch came to me and said: 

"The emperor has heard that there are a 
great many books translated out of your hon- 
orable Western languages into our miserable 
Chinese language, and he would like to have 
some." 

I was in charge of two tract societies and 
the books of the Society for the Distribution of 
General and Christian Knowledge, as well as 
the college text-books, and so I sent him some. 

The next day he came again, saying, "The 
emperor wants some more books." 

I sent him more books, and the following day 
he came with the same request. Every day for 
six weeks that eunuch came from the palace to 



236 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

get more books for the emperor, and I sent him 
every book I could find that had been trans- 
lated or written by Christians. Sometimes I 
had nothing but a Christian sheet tract to send 
him. Finally I went into my wife's library and 
took out her Chinese medical books and sent 
them to him. Indeed, he bought every book 
that had been written or translated: Roman 
Catholic or Protestant, religious, scientific, or 
social. 

One day the eunuch saw my wife's bicycle 
standing on the veranda. 

"Na, shih shenmo chef — What kind of a 
cart is that?" he asked. 

"Na chiu shih he tze hsing die — That is a 
self -moving cart, ' ' I answered. 

"Tsen mo clii — How do you ride it?" he 
continued. 

I took it down and rode a few times around 
the compound. 

"Che shih huai, tsen mo pu tao. Chiu yu 
Hang he lun tze. This is queer; why doesn't it 
fall down. It only has two wheels." 

1 ' When a thing is moving it can 't fall down, ' ' 
I explained. "Which, by the way, will apply to 
other things than bicycles. 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 237 

The next day he came and said, "The em- 
peror wants this bicycle." 

I sent my wife's bicycle in to the emperor, 
and not long afterwards it was reported in Pe- 
king that in trying to ride the bicycle his qnene 
had become tangled np in the rear wheel and 
he had had a fall; and so he gave np trying to 
ride the bicycle, as many another person has 
done. 

Bnt he got all the great inventions of mod- 
ern times ; then he bonght the Bible, which led 
him to secure all kinds of Western books. 
These he studied for three years, from 1895 till 
1898, when he began to issue his wonderful 
edicts. 

Among his first edicts was one in which he 
ordered that a Board of Education should be 
established, with a university in Peking and a 
college in the capitals of each of the provinces ; 
his object being eventually to have a system of 
public school education throughout the empire. 

Twenty years ago there was just one school 
established by the Chinese Government in 
which foreign studies were taught, and this was 
opened by a man who went to China as a mis- 
sionary, and who remains there as a missionary 



238 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

to-day. As a result of this edict we have at the 
present time more than forty thousand schools, 
colleges, and universities, in which every phase 
of foreign learning is taught ; and it is worthy 
of note that the first six colleges and universi- 
ties opened by the government were through the 
influence and under the superintendence of five 
men who went to China as missionaries. 

Another of these important edicts was to 
establish a Board of Eailroads; for the only 
method of travel in China from time immemo- 
rial was by mule-cart, mule-litter, sedan-chair, 
or houseboat — all of them slow and most of 
them uncomfortable. 

As a result of this edict and the sentiment 
generated by the new system of education, in- 
stead of the one hundred miles of railroad 
twenty years ago, they now have seven thou- 
sand miles completed, five thousand miles more 
projected, and they have just succeeded in bor- 
rowing fifty millions of dollars from Europe 
and America to continue their railroad con- 
struction. 

A third important edict was to establish a 
Board of Mines. I have seen old blind women 
in midwinter, under the old regime, sitting on 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 239 

the bare ground feeling about them if per- 
chance they might find a few weeds or corn- 
stalks to light a fire under their brick bed and 
cook their morsel of food and heat their bed, 
oblivious of the fact that just beneath them 
were great veins of coal, if only they dared to 
open the earth and take it out. They did not 
dare do so. Why! Because the earth was 
filled with spirits. There were spirits in the 
earth, in the air, in the trees, in the mountains, 
in the valleys — spirits everywhere. One could 
not dig a well without having a small shrine 
to burn incense to the spirit of the well. Trees 
— Ch'eng shen liao— became gods. But where 
the gospel and its by-products of intelligence 
and progress go, the spirits can not stay. And 
so the spirits are practically banished from 
China, and they are sinking great shafts deep 
down into the earth and taking out millions of 
tons of coal. 

The emperor issued twenty-seven such edicts 
in about twice that many days, all of them 
equal in importance to those mentioned in the 
reformation of old China. Do you ask why 
the young emperor was led to do this? I an- 
swer, because the Christian women from Eng- 



240 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

land and America and the Christian women of 
China sent a New Testament into the palace. 
There were other forces at work, forces which 
had a tremendous influence upon the young man. 
He was beginning to get a vision of the weak- 
ness of his own country — the weakness of their 
old religious system, their old educational sys- 
tem, their old agricultural system, their old mil- 
itary system, and the strength of the countries 
represented by the missionaries and the minis- 
ters of the foreign governments. As great a 
man as Chang Chih-tung wrote, about this time, 
in a book which the emperor ordered printed in 
large editions and circulated throughout the 
empire : ' ' Convert the temples and monasteries 
of Buddhists and Taoists into schools. To-day 
these exist in myriads. Every important city 
has more than a hundred. Temple lands and 
incomes are in most cases attached to them. 
If all these are appropriated to educational pur- 
poses, we guarantee plenty of money and means 
to carry out the plan. This could be done very 
well at the present time. The temples really 
belong to the people who contributed to their 
establishment. Buddhism and Taoism are de- 
caying, and can not long exist, whilst the West- 



INDIVIDUAL GOVERNMENT 241 

em religion is flourishing and making progress 
every day. Buddhism is on its last legs, and 
Taoism is discouraged, because its devils have 
become irresponsive and inefficacious. If there 
be a renaissance of Confuciansm, China will be 
brought to order and Buddhism and Taoism will 
receive secure protection from the sect of the 
learned. We suggest that seven temples with 
their land, out of every ten, be appropriated to 
educational purposes. The emperor can satisfy 
the ousted priests by the bestowal of distinc- 
tions and rewards upon themselves, or official 
rank upon their relatives. By these means our 
schools will spring up by the tens of thousands, 
and after their utility has been demonstrated 
the affluent gentry will doubtless come forward 
with subscriptions for a more extended educa- 
tional enterprise." 

All the great forces that have been at work 
in bringing about the regeneration of China are 
themselves by-products of our Christian civili- 
zation, while the direct inspiration that led the 
emperor to buy and study all kinds of Western 
books was that which came from his study of 
the Gospel of Luke and the New Testament; 
and hence the present great reform movement 



242 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

in all phases of Chinese political, business, so- 
cial, educational, and religious life is itself a 
by-product of modern Protestant missions. We 
say Protestant missions, for while Catholicism 
has been working in China for centuries past, 
and had had its influence, most, if not all, of 
which was for the uplift of China, it was too 
narrow in its scope and vision ever to have 
gotten the great Middle Kingdom out of the 
ruts of the ages. It required a vitalizing, re- 
vivifying influence, broad enough to take in all 
phases of life; and this Protestantism alone 
was able to communicate to the Chinese. 



CHAPTER XVII 

PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 

Jesus Christ thought in terms of empires and 
He talked in terms of continents and worlds, 
and He wants all of His followers to do the 
same. His visions were world-visions. He was 
a subject of no rnler, a citizen of no country. 
He was a citizen of the world, an inhabitant of 
the universe, a subject only of the King of kings. 
Listen to some of the last commands He 
gave to His disciples ; commands that have been 
reverberating among the corrugations of my 
brain for a quarter of a century. Maybe I have 
quoted them in another chapter. Maybe you 
have read them over again and again to con- 
vince others what the gospel ought to do with- 
out being convinced yourself to the point of 
action. "Go and teach all nations." He 
thought in terms of empires. "Go and preach 
the gospel to every creature, " " to the uttermost 
part of the earth." He talked in terms of con- 
tinents and worlds. 

243 



244 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

As a young man this came to me as a per- 
sonal matter, and as I read His last prayer for 
His disciples and ' ' for all those who should be- 
lieve" on Him through their preaching, I heard 
Him say, "As Thou hast sent Me into the 
world, even so (in exactly the same way) have 
I also sent them into the world, ' ' and I could not 
understand, and I can not yet, how anybody can 
read that sentence without the feeling that he 
ought to have some special share in mission 
work. By mission work I mean helping the fel- 
low who has never had a chance. 

It is not enough to say that you believe in 
home missions. It may be enough for you, but 
that is because you are small There are peo- 
ple — little people, shriveled souls — whose vision 
is no larger than their own village. There are 
others who can not see beyond their own State, 
and still others who can not see beyond their 
own country; but they are not Jesus Christ's 
kind. He could see Jerusalem. He could see 
Judea. He could see Samaria and Galilee; but 
His vision reached also to the uttermost parts 
of the earth. So I insist that your vision will 
show how big you are. 

Nor do I mean that a person is large just 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 245 

because he goes to a foreign land to work. 
There are little souls go long distances. They 
settle down in one small hole and drill and 
drill and drill. What we want is large men 
with large visions, who are ready to go, or ready 
to stay if their roots are sunk too deep at 
home, and send some one else in their place. It 
is just as important to be willing to send as 
to go, and Jesus Christ in this age wants more 
men at the home base who are willing to pay 
their representative on the firing-line, or raise 
up a man on the foreign field who will go out 
and teach, or preach to his own people. Get 
a vision. Then take upon yourself a task — a 
task big enough for you. A vision without a 
task will make you a visionary. A task without 
a vision will make you a drudge. But a task 
with a vision has a fair chance of making you 
a hero and some one else a man. 

Then, when you have taken upon yourself a 
task, be a live wire. And remember that a live 
wire may be one of two kinds : it may be charged 
by a dynamo and may carry light or power to 
a thousand neighborhoods, or it may run a 
dynamo and may set the machinery of a dozen 
mills in motion. 



246 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Get it on your nerves, and remember, as 
some one has said, that you have two sets of 
nerves: sensory nerves and motor nerves. 
There are thousands of people all over the 
Church who have had missions and a hundred 
other good things on their sensory nerves for 
years. There were times when they could not 
sleep. There were times when it brought tears 
from their eyes. There were times when it 
brought a throbbing to their heart. What they 
want now is to switch it onto their motor nerves. 
Get it to move your tongue to talk for missions, 
and you go into your pockets and bring out 
gifts for missions. Let the farmer plant for 
missions, and the carpenter build, and the 
laborer labor, and the millionaire give of his 
millions for missions. And then let some give, 
as the Master gave, their life, their blood for 
the sake of sending the gospel to the last man 
in "the uttermost part of the earth." 

Before I had finished my college life this 
thing got on my sensory nerves, and I decided 
that if I could not go to the foreign field I would 
take up a boy in some mission school or college, 
educate him, and send him out as my repre- 
sentative in the uttermost part of the earth. 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 247 

Just as I completed my work in the university 
I got it switched onto my motor nerves and I 
was sent to China. I did not get it off my sen- 
sory nerves, however. I was sent to " teach," 
and I tried to put my life and my intelligence, in 
so far as I could, into the boys I taught. But I 
could not get away from the thought that it 
would be gratifying to have a boy with a Chi- 
nese tongue and Chinese thought and a Chinese 
heart whom my money had educated, and who 
would go forth and teach or preach the gospel 
in my stead. I could educate a boy for thirty 
dollars a year; and so I found a boy, and I got 
him in this way. 

My wife went to China two years before I 
did. She was a physician in charge of the hos- 
pital of the Presbyterian mission in Peking. 
One day a woman, dying of tuberculosis, en- 
tered her dispensary, leading a little six-year- 
old boy by the hand. 

The doctor examined her carefully, but was 
compelled to tell her there was no hope; medi- 
cine could not save her life. Nevertheless, as 
she was a country woman, far from her native 
village, and had about her all the evidences of 
poverty, she took her into the dispensary and 



248 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

assured her that she would do what she could 
for her. She told her of the love of the Master, 
of the power of the gospel, and that, while medi- 
cine could not save her life, Jesus Christ could 
save her soul. 

There are those who think that one is talk- 
ing sentiment when he pretends to know that 
he is saved. But I want to say that, while I 
believe in sentiment in its place, I do not talk 
sentiment in matters of this kind. I know I am 
saved. I faithed that matter out in my con- 
version, just as I solved my problems in ge- 
ometry while in college, by reasoning. Spir- 
itual problems are solved by faith just as tem- 
poral problems are solved by reason, and after 
their solution they are just as much a part of 
our definite knowledge as the products of rea- 
son. The reason why there is so much uncer- 
tainty about the results of faith is that spiritual 
knowledge is of a higher order and there are 
fewer people who have tried to acquire spiritual 
knowledge in a scientific and logical way. 

This woman believed what the doctor told 
her. Like most of her class, she was not con- 
cerned about the scientific explanation, the rea- 
sons, and the logical connections. She simply 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 249 

knew she was saved. She was satisfied that a 
change had come into her life — a change which 
banished the fear of death and brought her a 
lasting peace. She did not understand it. She 
did not try to understand it. She was satisfied 
with the thing itself, whatever it was. It made 
life easier, and it banished all the horror of 
death by substituting for it a hope of a life 
to come. 

But one day the doctor came into the hos- 
pital, and there sa,t the woman, with her little 
boy in her arms, to whom she was crooning a 
Chinese lullaby: 

My little baby, little boy blue, 
Is as sweet as sugar and cinnamon too; 
Is n't this precious darling of ours, 
Sweeter than dates and cinnamon flowers ? 

and great, tears were rolling down her cheeks. 

"Why, Mrs. Tsan," exclaimed the doctor, 
"what is the matter? Are you afraid to die?" 

' ' No, I am not afraid to die, ' ' she answered ; 
"but when I die, what is to become of this little 
boy?" 

And sure enough, what was to become of 
that little boy? There are no hospitals, no dis- 



250 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

pensaries, no foundling asylums, no orphanages, 
no places of any kind to care for the little folks 
who are left without parents. These also are 
by-products of the gospel, and the little ones 
who are left alone in babyhood and childhood 
are like so many puppies on the street. But 
you, my dear reader, do not know what "pup- 
pies on the street ' ' means unless you have vis- 
ited an Oriental city. One of these little 
motherless animals finds a bone or a cabbage- 
leaf, and a bigger dog attacks it, bites it, takes 
away its bone, and it goes whining and hungry 
away, until some morning its little lifeless body 
is found stretched out in the gutter and it is 
hauled away with the refuse. 

It is the same with the little human animals. 
I was coming from church one cold, bright Sun- 
day morning in midwinter. There were a lot 
of little mat shacks built against the city wall 
where the beggars lived. A babe had been born 
in one of these hovels during the night or morn- 
ing ; it was thrown out upon the sand, where it 
lay like a dead rat as I came home from church. 
On another occasion I was walking on top of 
the city wall with one of the ladies of the Wom- 
an's Foreign Missionary Society. It was just 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 251 

at dusk. I stumbled upon something, and, look- 
ing to see what it was, I found a child's head, 
the body having been devoured by the dogs. 
Pardon me for telling these gruesome tales ; but 
that is the fate of many of the little dead chil- 
dren in a land without a gospel. 

Every morning there is a big black cart, 
pulled by a big black cow, comes down the street 
not two hundred yards from where I have lived 
for sixteen years. A man goes with it and 
gathers up the little packages that are wrapped 
up in floor matting and placed upon the street 
corners. These he puts in the cart, drags them 
out of the city, and buries them all in one hole. 
Such is the fate of the little dead children. 
Now, what of the living ones? 

Often, as I have gone along the streets on 
cold winter nights, I have passed a large pot, 
two feet or more in diameter, imbedded upon 
the top of a clay oven. In this pot the nut 
dealers roast their chestnuts. The clay of the 
oven will hold the heat a good part of the night, 
and often as I have returned from church on 
Sunday night I have seen two of these little 
ragged street urchins curled up head to feet, 
clothed in rags, in this pot, the only place they 



252 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

have to sleep. At such times one can not help 
thinking of those who care nothing except for 
their own comfort and entertainment, of Laza- 
rus and the rich man, and of the words of the 
Master: "Son, remember that thou in thy life- 
time receivedst thy good things, and likewise 
Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, 
and thou art tormented. ' ' And I can not Tielp 
adding: "God forbid that we should be on the 
rich man's side of that fixed gulf, whatever it 
may be, when we long for a drop of water for 
our parched tongue, because we have appropri- 
ated the gifts of the gospel and forgotten the 
poor." And so this poor woman said, "No, I 
am not afraid to die; but when I die, what is 
to become of this little boy?" 

And the doctor, her woman's heart moved 
with compassion for the mother, answered: 

"Mrs. Tsan, give me your little boy. I will 
adopt him as my boy, and I will take care of 
him." 

And Mrs. Tsan gave the little boy to the 
doctor. Then, some six years afterward, I mar- 
ried the doctor and got that boy, eleven or 
twelve years old, extra. 

I never got anything better in my life — bet- 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 253 

ter for me and better for the boy. And let me 
say right here that a thing is never better for 
you until you have made it better for some one 
else. God gives no gifts outright. With some 
He deposits ten talents, with others five, with 
others one; but the time will come when He 
will require an account. 

I put the boy in school. I paid Ms expenses. 
I helped to teach him. I watched his develop- 
ment. He was a good boy and a fairly clever 
boy, and I loved him. But the year before he 
was about to graduate my wife and I both be- 
came anxious about him, as he did about him- 
self. One day, in his junior year, he came to 
me and said, "Father, I am afraid if I remain 
in school until I graduate I will go as my 
mother went." 

"Well, my boy," I answered, "what do you 
want to do?" 

"I would like to go out into the country," 
he replied, "and get plenty of fresh air and 
exercise, and help some one else, and save my 
life." 

"Why, God bless you, my boy, go!" I ex- 
claimed, and, giving him some money, I added, 
"I want you to eat good food and take good 



254 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

care of yourself, and if you need money, write 
and tell me, and I will send it to you." 

He never wrote for another dollar. He went 
into the army and taught the officers English, 
and preached to them. What is preaching? 
Not getting upon a rostrum and delivering a 
sermon. That is not preaching. Preaching is 
just sitting down beside some one in a railroad 
train, or a trolley car, or in your office or home, 
or on the side of a well, and telling them of the 
water of life, or the bread of life, the gospel 
of salvation. 

After he had been in this work for some time 
there was an old official opened a school in Yang 
Chou on the Grand Canal. He employed one 
of our graduates as principal of the school and 
my boy as assistant principal, and he told them 
they might take their New Testaments and teach 
them all they cared to. If he had not allowed 
this they would not have gone. Then there was 
an old viceroy got New Testaments enough to 
send to every official in his province, and he told 
them they might put them in their schools if 
they cared to. And while we are taking the 
New Testament — the foundation of all our civ- 
ilization — out of our public schools, these Chi- 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS Z55 

nese viceroys and officials are putting it into 
theirs. And at whose instance are we taking 
it out? Because of the objections of the Roman 
Catholic and the Jew! — the one a people who 
have lost their power in every country they have 
ever dominated, until at present there is not a 
first-class power that recognizes Roman Cathol- 
icism as a State religion ; and the other a people 
who have never had a country since they re- 
jected Jesus Christ and the New Testament. It 
behooves us in the light of this statement to 
inquire what it is that has made us what we are, 
and then to beware of taking the foundation out 
from under our government. 

But, to return to my work and my boy ; four 
years ago I broke down. I am often asked 
what chair I have in the Peking University. I 
usually answer that I do not have a chair at 
all. I have a whole bench. I have been teach- 
ing astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, physi- 
ology, physics, mental science, moral science, 
and physical geography. That is my regular 
diet. But I have taught them (or shall I say 
that the boys have studied them?) in such a way 
that our graduates can come to Columbia,, Syra- 
cuse, Boston, Michigan, Minnesota, Northwest- 



256 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

era, and California Universities and enter for 
post-graduate work without examinations. 
Moreover, I have taught them every winter for 
sixteen years with an ulster that reached to my 
feet, arctics on my feet, gloves on my hands, and 
a cap on my head, to keep warm. You ask why ? 
I answer, because every thirty dollars ' worth of 
coal we burn to heat the building, burns up the 
education of a boy. And you can not live in a 
land without a gospel and turn away boys anx- 
ious for an education — so anxious that they are 
willing to live on food that costs only $1.75 per 
month— and keep yourself comfortable. God 
help you, my dear reader, to get this thing on 
your nerves and spend less upon your own lux- 
uries and more on needy humanity! 

I broke down. Simply overwork. I took a 
tropical, Asiatic disease called sprue, and ran 
down one pound a day for twenty-one days. I 
said to my physician, 

"Look here, Doctor, I can't keep this up in- 
definitely. ' ' 

"Oh, it will stop after awhile," he answered. 

It got me down to one hundred and fourteen 
pounds, and then it stopped. They put me on 
a milk diet, and kept me on it for nine weeks. 
Then they shipped me home for repairs. 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 257 

As I was going from Tientsin to Shanghai 
I was sea-sick and could not take the milk, and 
when I arrived at Shanghai I was so weak I 
could scarcely move. When Dr. Lowry and my 
wife came to take me off the vessel I said to 
them, 

"If you get me to Seattle alive we will be 
satisfied." 

I never expected to reach Seattle. I felt like 
a man with one foot in the grave. And I tell 
you when you get there you think a good deal. 
Then comes the time when to be saved is the 
most important thing in time or in eternity. 
You do not care for dollars. You do not care 
for fame. Nothing but the knowledge that if 
you go down into the grave it is all right, will 
satisfy you. And my wife will testify that dur- 
ing those nine weeks I did not have one blue 
hour. I know what it means to be saved when 
you think you are going to die. 

They took me over to the hotel, and there 
was a letter from my boy — the boy my wife had 
rescued from the street and I had helped to 
make into a man. I opened it with trembling 
hands; not from fear, but from love. It was 
the last letter I would get from him before I 

17 



258 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

left China; perhaps the last I would ever get. 
It was covered all over with tear-stains — and 
there were more on it before I finished reading 
it. He said : 

"My Deae Father: 

I am sorry you have broken down. I am 
sorry you have to go home. I hope you will 
soon be better, and I hope you will soon be 
able to come back again. ' ' 

Then he wrote another paragraph : 

"But do n't worry. It is all right. Ee- 
member I am here, and I '11 do my best for 
Jesus Christ." 

If there ever comes a time when you feel that 
you have one foot in the grave, and some little 
boy or girl whom you have saved from poverty 
and distress can write and say: "Do n't worry; 
it 's all right. I '11 do my best for Jesus 
Christ," there is nothing that will come to you 
with more of comfort or joy. And I said to my- 
self: 

"It 's all right. If I do go down into the 
Pacific Ocean as my grave, and up to the throne 
of God, I won't try to apologize for what I have 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 259 

not done. I '11 just trust Jesus Christ and point 
back to my boy." 

I often think of him as I am thus kept away 
from my work, and always, as I lie down to 
sleep at night — especially on Saturday night — ■ 
for the day begins in the middle of the Pacific 
Ocean ; and as I lie down on Saturday night he 
is just getting up on Sunday morning. All night 
while I sleep he is teaching or preaching the 
gospel of the Master. Then, as he lies down on 
Sunday night I get up on Sunday morning ; and 
while he sleeps I work. Ajid so for twenty-four 
hours each day my boy and I work for the Mas- 
ter; for there is no night with us. We do not 
change night to day, nor day to night; but by 
being thus on the opposite sides of the world 
we can do God's work in two hemispheres and 
among two peoples, and I have a feeling that, 
though my health may shut me away from 
China, I have my representative there, who will 
do his best for Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 

If I were asked what is the most important 
thing to be done in the establishment of Chris- 
tianity in a non-Christian land, I should say the 
establishment of Christian homes. The indi- 
vidual is not the unit of a country. The family 
is the unit. God, when He undertook to people 
a world, did it by the establishment of a home. 
Again, when He undertook to save a world from 
a flood, He did it by saving a home. Once more, 
when He wanted to raise up a nation into whose 
minds and hearts He could commit His most 
precious revelation, He did it by raising up a 
God-fearing man and wife; for Sarah was as 
important an element as Abraham in the mak- 
ing of the character of the Jewish people. 
Those who desire to know the difference between 
a man with a Christian wife and one with a 
heathen wife in a non-Christian land may study 
the history of Abraham and Lot. Both of them 
were alike called faithful ; but while the record 
of the one is resplendent with honor, that of 

260 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 261 

the other may not be written. A Christian 
home in a non-Christian community is to the 
ordinary home what an arc-light is to a tallow 
dip, and is a by-product of the gospel the same 
as the arc-light. 

Mr. Wang, a scholar from the Shantung 
Province, a graduate of the first degree, was 
in Peking attending the examinations for the 
purpose, if possible, of securing his M. A. He 
failed to take his degree, and one day while 
walking down the Hatamen great street he 
dropped into our street chapel and sat down to 
rest and, incidentally, to listen to the preaching. 
Something that the preacher said caught his at- 
tention, caused him to forget his failure, and 
he became interested in the gospel message. 

After the meeting was over Mr. Wang sat 
still, and as the missionary, Mr. Leander W. 
Pilcher, was leaving the church, he said to Mr. 
Wang, among other things, 

"I hope you will be among the saved.' ' 

"What does he mean?" asked Mr. Wang of 
Ch'en, the gatekeeper, who was then assisting 
in chapel work. 

Before Mr. Ch'en answered the question, the 
following conversation took place: 



262 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"What is your honorable name, sir?" 

"My miserable name is Wang." 

"Where do you live?" 

"I live in the Province of Shantung, the vil- 
lage of An Chia, near Tai-an-fu." 

"What is your business, sir?" 

"I have no business at present, but am in 
Peking to attend the examinations." 

"Are you interested in Christianity?" 

"Yes, I am interested in it; but I do not 
understand it. What does he mean by saying 
he hopes I will be among the saved?" 

Mr. Wang — or, as he was always called, 
Teacher Wang, was of a delicate constitution, 
with much the appearance of one in the later 
stages of consumption ; and without directly an- 
swering his question, Mr. Ch'en asked, 

"Would you like to know more about this 
doctrine?" 

"Indeed I would," replied the scholar. 

Ch'en invited him to his home to drink tea 
and talk the matter over, introduced him to Dr. 
Pilcher and the other missionaries, engaged him 
in conversation, interested him in the message 
of salvation, and Mr. Wang was soon anxious 
like the Philippian jailer to learn the process 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 263 

by which a man past middle life might attain 
that very desirable end. 

Ch'en offered him a room in the mission com- 
pound where he could sleep, conversed with him 
as often as possible, gave him a New Testament 
and other books to read, took him to hear the 
preaching, put him with others in a study class, 
taught him how to pray and what it meant to 
believe, and in a short time Mr. Wang was con- 
verted. The mission offered him a small salary 
if he would become their chapel-keeper and give 
his testimony in the street chapel where he first 
heard the gospel. Mr. Wang consented to do 
this for a time; but he soon felt that he ought 
to proclaim his newly-found Savior to the mem- 
bers of his own family and the people of his 
native village. The mission, therefore, gave 
him a cart-load of Christian tracts, a number 
of copies of the New Testament and the Hym- 
nal, and he set out for Shantung. 

When he arrived at home Mrs. Wang asked 
him to tell about the trip. He did so 1 . He told 
of the examination and of his failure to pass; 
of his dejected condition when he went into the 
street chapel; of the interest shown in him by 
the boy Ch'en; of the kindness of those whom 



264 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

he had always been accustomed to think of as 
" foreign devils;" of the cleanliness of their 
homes, their earnestness in their religious wor- 
ship; of their schools for boys and girls, their 
training-classes for men and women; of their 
hospitals and their care of the sick ; of the clear 
way in which they seemed to understand the 
problems of eternity and what one must do to 
inherit eternal life — problems which had always 
puzzled him. 

That night, and every morning and evening 
thereafter, he gathered his family about him, 
as Ch'en had done in Peking, for family wor- 
ship. All idols were banished from his home. 
The worship of his ancestors, whose names he 
did not know but for a few generations back, 
was given up, or absorbed in the worship of the 
great Father of us all. He told how they sang, 
and how they played musical instruments in 
their worship at Peking. But he could not sing. 
He was too old to learn to sing; but he hoped 
his children would some time learn. In lieu of 
singing he therefore read the hymns; for the 
hymn book was almost as sacred to him as the 
Bible. 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 265 

One day he was reading the hymn: 

"Ye who seek the throne of grace 
Do not delay" . . . 

"Will you kindly read that again V said 
Mrs. Wang. 

Her husband did so. She thanked him, and 
he read the remainder of the hymn. She did not 
ask him to explain the meaning. She thought 
she understood it. But it was peculiar. It is 
clear enough in English; but in Chinese "Pu 
yao ch'ih yen" may mean either ' ' Do not delay' ' 
or "Do not use tobacco." 

Mrs. Wang smoked. Almost every Chinese 
woman smokes. I do not see why a woman has 
not as much right to smoke as a man. I would 
not advise my lady readers to take advantage 
of their privilege, but the Chinese accord the 
same rights to their women as to their men in 
this matter. Mr. Wang had said to himself, 

"I will first preach to my own family and 
my relatives, if I can not induce them to believe 
I can not expect to persuade my neighbors, " 
a principle that is worthy of any man's practice. 
What does your wife and children think of your 
religion? They know you better than any one 



£66 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

else does. Do they approve of it? Does it ap- 
peal to them? It often happens that preachers 
succeed better where they are not known than 
where they are. They can preach better than 
they can practice. Mr. Wang's life was a model 
for his family. Mrs. Wang was of the same 
type. When a thing was worth believing it was 
worth practicing, and if it was worthy of prac- 
tice it was worth preaching. 

By a simple process of reasoning — a very 
simple process — Mrs. Wang, in the light of this 
hymn as she understood it, or misunderstood it, 
came to the conclusion that if she smoked she 
could not go to heaven. Now, is it not queer 
that Mrs. Wang, who had never listened to any 
of the temperance people "railing" on the evils 
of tobacco, should without inquiry have ac- 
cepted such a conclusion? She did, however; 
and she put away her pipe. As her neighbors 
began to believe, through her husband's preach- 
ing, she told them what the hymn book said 
about smoking, and she got them to give up 
their pipes; and they had a bonfire of women's 
pipes in the little village of An Chia — the first 
temperance crusade, so far as I know, that was 
begun by the Christians in China. And may I 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 267 

just here remark that the great temperance 
movement, as it is being carried on so success- 
fully in many parts of the world, is another of 
the by-products of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Within a month Mr. Wang had induced his 
family to accept the gospel, together with cer- 
tain relatives and neighbors, and then he began 
going about the neighboring villages preaching 
and selling books. 

One day he said to his son, a large, over- 
grown boy: 

"My books will all be sold before I can get 
another supply from Peking. You take these 
eighteen names of those who are willing to join 
the Church, go to Peking, and ask the mission- 
aries to come down and establish a church in 
my home — and bring back a wheel-barrow load 
of books." 

The boy did as he was told. He was him- 
self one of the converts. He remained in Peking 
for a few weeks studying in the training-school ; 
and after securing a promise from the missiona- 
ries that they would visit his village he took his 
wheel-barrow load of books and returned home. 
The missionaries soon followed, baptized some 
of the converts, established the church in Mr. 



268 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Wang's home after the style of the apostles in 
the early days, and thns began the building of 
the Church in the shadow of Tai— the great 
sacred mountain of the province. 

Mr. Wang preached for three years, going 
about all the villages within a radius of a score 
of miles, often when he was too weak to do so. 
To all his wife's admonitions his only answer 
was: 

"I must work while it is day. The night 
will soon come when I can not work." 

The night did come, though it was only the 
beginning of a long, long day for Mr. Wang. 
He preached only as many years as his Master, 
but where he preached there is now a mission 
station, a men's and a women's hospital, boys' 
and girls' schools, two presiding elders' dis- 
tricts, with churches all over that part of the 
province. 

Mrs. Wang — or "Old Mother Wang," as she 
has long been called — is probably the most char- 
acteristic woman that has been developed by the 
Church in China. After the funeral of her hus- 
band she called her son Ch'eng-p'ei to her and 
said, 

"I want you to take me to Peking, where I 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 269 

can study in the training-school and take up 
your father's work." 

Her son took her to the capital, where he 
studied in the boys ' school, while she entered the 
training-school, that they both might prepare 
themselves for the work that the husband and 
father had laid down. 

Shortly after she had begun her studies some 
one called her attention to a Chinese character 
and asked her what it was. 

"I do not know," she answered. 

"Why, that is your own name," they ex- 
plained. 

"And I began to understand how ignorant 
I was!" exclaimed Mrs. Wang, as she related 
the incident. 

But she set herself to study, and it was not 
long until she was able to read the Gospel of 
John with such facility that she asked to be sent 
out as a Bible woman and for a time be allowed 
to teach what she knew. This she did for a time 
and then returned to her studies, and after two 
years she expressed herself as ready to return 
home and take up her husband's work. 

They left Peking, she and her son, in a Chi- 
nese cart; but they had not gone far when the 



270 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

cart upset, the old woman became frightened, 
and did not want to get in the cart again. The 
boy dismissed the cart, hired a wheel-barrow, 
put his mother on one side, their bedding and 
clothing on the other, and wheeled her four hun- 
dred miles to her home, in order that she might 
take up the work that her husband had laid 
down. 

It takes heroes to perform that kind of tasks, 
and it requires heroines to bear such heroes. 
But both Mrs. Wang and her son Ch'eng-p'ei 
answer to that description as the sequel to the 
tale will show. For forty years Mrs. Wang pur- 
sued her labors, going about the villages on a 
wheel-barrow loaded with books, over which a 
great umbrella was spread. There were times 
when the people jeered at her and told her she 
was crazy. Her only answer to such was, 
"You knew my husband, did you not?" 
"Yes, I knew your husband." 
"He was a scholar, wasn't he?" 
"Yes; quite right; he was a scholar." 
"You would not think he was crazy, would 
you?" 

"No one would dare to think him crazy,' ' 
they admitted. 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 271 

"Yet he preached this same doctrine that 
I am trying to preach, ' ' she concluded ; and this 
usually ended the discussion. When l ' old Mother 
Wang" was eighty years old she made the trip 
from Shantung to Peking in a cart, in spite 
of her fear of that vehicle, in order to ask Mrs. 
Headland to take her into the palace to preach 
to the empress dowager, " because," she said, 
and her hands and her voice trembled, "because 
I am so old it seems to me that there is a prob- 
ability that the ' Old Buddha ' will be willing to 
listen to the gospel from my lips." 

In spite of her age and her anxiety, however, 
it was impossible to get her into the palace, as 
no Chinese woman has ever been admitted 
within the walls of the sacred Forbidden City 
since the present Manchu dynasty took the 
throne, in 1644, if we except the empress dow- 
ager's painting teacher, who before she was ad- 
mitted was forced to unbind her feet, don a 
Manchu garb, and dress her hair in the fashion 
of the court. 

Some thirty years ago Miss Clara Cushman 
went from Massachusetts to China, intending 
to devote her life to the uplifting of the Chinese 
woman. Her father and mother, however, were 



272 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

old, and twenty years ago she was compelled to 
return and care for them until they both went 
to their reward. The Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society then asked her to return to 
China. Before starting she cabled "Old 
Mother Wang:" "Don't go to heaven till I 
come. I want to see you again. " " Old Mother 
Wang" waited, and the next picture that came 
from the field was the American heroine of fifty- 
six sitting at the feet of the old Chinese heroine 
of eighty-four. Then Mrs. Wang went peace- 
fully to heaven. 

Wang Ch'eng-p'ei became our second or- 
dained preacher in the North China Conference. 
In 1893 he was stationed at Lan Chou, when 
Eev. J. H. Pyke visited his Church for the pur- 
pose of holding revival services. Dr. Pyke 
preached night after night without being able to 
move the people. One night, after he had fin- 
ished his address, he asked for testimonies, con- 
fessions, or prayer. No one moved. Finally 
Wang Ch 'eng-p 'ei 's little boy arose and said he 
wanted to confess his sins. When asked by the 
leader what sins he had, he said : 

1 ' Yesterday I was playing with my little sis- 
ter. She was tao ch'i (mischievous), and I 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 273 

slapped her. Tliat is my first great sin. I have 
another, also. Last week grandmother sent me 
to the store. I could not get back before dark, 
and I was afraid. I knew Jesns could protect 
me in the dark as well as in the light, but still 
I was afraid. I did not trust Him." 

The confession of this child started a revival 
service unlike any that had ever been known in 
North China. Old men steeped in wickedness 
confessed their sins and begged for forgiveness, 
and there was started here, as a result of the 
confession of this child, a revival that over- 
spread all North China, going through the 
schools, colleges, and theological seminaries as 
well as the Churches. At this meeting the chil- 
dren became very happy, and the next day, while 
they were playing in the sand, Dr. Pyke heard 
one of them exclaim, 

"Oh, I am just as happy as though I had a 
double handful of cash!" 

1 ' I am just as happy as though I had a double 
handful of silver," said his little brother, as he 
scooped up his hands full of sand and let it 
run down between his bare feet. 

At the time of the Boxer insurrection, in 
1900, Wan Ch'eng-p'ei was attending Confer- 

' 18 



274 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

ence in Peking. I think I ought to digress 
enough just here to give an account of the cause 
of the Boxer trouble. It was not a by-product 
of missions, as has so often been supposed, but 
a direct product of the avarice and aggressions 
of the European governments. 

In the spring of 1898 there were two Roman 
Catholic priests murdered by the Chinese in 
Shantung. They were German subjects, and as 
the German Emperor had long been anxious to 
start the division of China among the powers, 
he made this a pretext. He sent his fleet into 
Chinese waters and ordered them to make the 
mailed fist a terror in the Orient. They did. 
They compelled the Chinese to pay a heavy in- 
demnity to the families of these two priests and 
to rebuild the churches and houses destroyed. 
That was all right. If people take life and de- 
stroy property they should help to support those 
who are left, and restore the property. And 
that was enough. But it was not enough for the 
German Emperor. He took the port of Kiao 
Chiao with fifty miles of territory around it, and 
compelled the Chinese Government to promise 
to allow him to open all the mines and build all 
the railroads within the province. This made 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 275 

the governor (Yii Hsien) angry, and he estab- 
lished the Big Knife Society, of which his own 
son was a member, determined ultimately to 
drive every foreigner ont of China. When we 
remember that the German minister was the 
only one massacred, and that his death was de- 
termined upon long before it was accomplished 
i — for it was published in the New York Sun four 
days before it happened — we may rely upon it 
that this is the true explanation of the Boxer 
movement. But Germany was not the sole 
cause. 

When Russia heard that Germany had taken 
a port and a "sphere of influence" in the Prov- 
ince of Shantung, she demanded and took both 
Port Arthur and Dalne, without any cause 
on the part of the Chinese whatever. England, 
also without cause, took Wei-hai-wei. France 
in the same way took Kuang-Chou-wan, and 
Italy tried to take San-men. This all occurred 
while the emperor was issuing his reform edicts 
of 1898, and this, and not the missionaries, was 
the cause of the Boxer uprising. 

Wang Ch'eng-p'ei, as we have indicated, was 
attending Conference in Peking when the Boxers 
reached that city. Before the Conference closed, 



276 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

in spite of the watchfulness of the missionaries 
as well as the native Christians, the railroad was 
destroyed, and it was impossible for either the 
missionaries from other stations or the native 
preachers from other parts of the province to 
return to their homes. Some may condemn 
them as shortsighted and careless. To those 
thus inclined let me say that as brilliant a man 
as W. A. P. Martin, who had been in China for 
fifty years and was then president and founder 
of the Imperial Peking University, remained in 
his own home until, when he was on his way to 
the British Legation, whence he was fleeing for 
safety, his cart and mule were forcibly taken 
from him by the Boxers, and he was compelled 
to complete his journey afoot. And Sir Eobert 
Hart, that marvelous statesman, diplomat, and 
inspector general of the Imperial Maritime Cus- 
toms Service, who had also been in China for 
half a century, and had manipulated more 
treaties for the Chinese Government than any 
other person, when he entered the British Le- 
gation and was asked what of his property he 
had saved, answered, ''Only the clothes I have 
on." 

We can not blame the missionaries, there- 
fore, for having been taken by surprise. Wang 



PRODUCTS AND BY-PRODUCTS 277 

Ch'eng-p'ei was made the leader of the Chris- 
tians who were organized into troops to defend 
the mission against the Boxers. When the mis- 
sionaries were asked to go to the legation, they 
refused to go unless they could take the stu- 
dents of the university and the girls' high 
school, together with such Christians as cared 
to go with them. This was at first refused, but 
in a few moments thereafter sanctioned, and 
they were allowed to occupy Prince Su's palace 
across the canal from the legation. Here 
Ch'eng-p'ei was also leader of the Christian de- 
fenders of the palace. 

On one occasion the Boxers got close up to 
the walls of the palace and attempted to kill the 
prisoners with bricks, stones, and clubs, while 
others were on housetops not far away, ready 
to shoot down any one who appeared in de- 
fense of the imprisoned women and girls. 
Ch'eng-p'ei saw that a sortie must be made, 
and so he called to his companions : 

"Who will follow me and help to drive away 
these Boxers and save our women and chil- 
dren?" 

"You lead, and we will follow," answered a 
Congregational Christian who was also a leader. 

"A good brother!" exclaimed Ch'eng-p'ei, 



278 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

and with a flourish of his sword he rushed forth 
at the head of a band of brave Christian sol- 
diers. A Boxer bullet struck him in the chest, 
and he fell. "Go on, my brothers, drive them 
away ! " he exclaimed. They did so. Then they 
carried Ch'eng-p'ei, with other brave ones who 
had fallen, over to the British Legation, where 
their wounds were as carefully dressed by the 
physicians and they were as tenderly nursed 
by the brave missionary girls and women as the 
foreigners; but Ch'eng-p'ei's life went out in 
a very few hours, and his name was added to 
the long list of brave martyrs who laid down 
their lives rather than give up their faith. A 
good product among the many by-products of 
missions in China. 



CHAPTER XIX 

BY-PRODUCTS IN EXPLORATION AND 
DISCOVERT 

When Jesus Christ was preaching to His dis- 
ciples in Judea and Galilee the world was a 
mystery. It was unknown and unexplored. It 
had two centers and two seats of civilization, 
as indicated by their names : the Mediterranean, 
the center and seat of the civilization of 
Europe, Asia, and Africa ; and Chung Kuo, the 
"Middle Country" — China — the center and 
seat of the civilization of the Mongol people of 
Eastern Asia. Between these, in the real center 
of the undiscovered world, lay India, to and 
from which the traffic, the trade, and the trav- 
elers of both the other civilizations were con- 
stantly going and coming. 

. Each of these centers had already estab- 
lished its educational and religious systems. 
The eastern consisted of a kind of speculative 
philosophy dealing with man, things, law, gov- 
ernment, morals, and life; while the western 

279 



280 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

undertook to discover man in his relation to 
God, sin, eternity, and death. Each of them 
worked independent of the other — ignorant even 
of his existence. Confucins in China and Py- 
thagoras in Greece (500 B. C.) were struggling 
with the same problems at the same time and 
answering them in the same general way. Aris- 
totle and Chuangtzn, likewise in China and 
Greece, and likewise ignorant of each other, as 
are most of their successors, for the name of 
Chuangtzu, even in the twentieth century, is 
omitted from our encyclopedias, while most of 
my readers have never heard his name, were 
working on the same great problems with the 
same masterly intellects. Isn't it pitiable that 
a writer in an encyclopedia of the twentieth 
century should be allowed to say, ' ' In his eight- 
eenth year (367 B. C.) Aristotle left Stagier a 
for Athens, then the intellectual center of Greece 
and of the civilized world/* when two other 
civilizations of equal growth were developed in 
the adjoining continent? 

These three centers of civilization each had 
its own separate religions: China had Taoism 
and Confucianism, neither of which have been 
distinctly missionary systems; for they have 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 281 

made little effort to propagate themselves by 
the sending out of missionary representatives 
or religious teachers. India had Brahmanism 
and Buddhism, the former not missionary, 
while the latter left its birthplace and propa- 
gated itself throughout the Oriental world. 
Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, and indeed all of 
Europe, gave up their native systems — a strong 
argument against those who say that a civilized 
people will never abandon their native religions 
for an alien system — and adopted that of the 
Jewish Nazarene. 

In order to get this clearly before our minds, 
for we want to be honest in our analysis, let us 
admit that these three systems of civilization 
developed three distinct lines of thinking. The 
East was dominated by the thinking of Con- 
fucius, which was man's relation to man in 
human government, and it has developed the 
two oldest systems of government the world has 
to-day. "While they have a system of worship 
connected with it — the worship of ancestors — 
it is not a religious, but only a moral system. 
It has developed a people who have done noth- 
ing toward the discovery of God, and little to- 
ward the discovery of the world and of things. 



282 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

The Hindoo system was dominated by Brah- 
manism and developed a great religio-socialistic 
system, the head of which was the priest. They 
had their Menu to draw up rules of government 
just as the Chinese had their Confucius, and the 
Greeks their Plato ; but his code of laws did not 
dominate the thinking of the Hindoo people as 
Confucius did that of the Chinese. The priest 
took the place in the social system of the Hin- 
doos that the government official took in that 
of the Chinese, and hence turned the thinking 
of the people to a contemplation of universal 
laws, universal principles — the universal. They 
undertook to think out God, infinity, eternity, 
salvation ; and they have sat in mystic contem- 
plation until they have thought themselves out 
to the border of the universe and have arrived 
everywhere, anywhere, nowhere, unless it be in 
abstract infinity and universal nothingness. 
They did not develop a government that would 
stand the test of time, neither did they get a 
grasp of things that would enable them to pro- 
vide for their people. 

One could almost imagine that the above de- 
scription referred to the Jew, except for three 
things: the Jew gave no place to caste, no place 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 283 

to idols, and had an infinite conception of the 
value of things ; and hence he kept fast hold of 
his one God, was left without a government, but 
with a fair share of the wealth of the world 
within his coffers. 

Now let us turn to the European type of 
civilization. As the disposition of the Hindoo 
was to think in terms of the universal, that of 
the European was to think in terms of the par- 
ticular. The former was telescopic, without the 
ability to make a telescope ; the latter was mic- 
roscopic, with the ability to make both a tele- 
scope and a microscope, but without the dispo- 
sition to think in terms of the universal, but 
always anxious to divide, dissect, analyze, and 
classify the universal in terms of the particular. 
Hence he was never able to make a religion that 
was worth propagating, for religion deals with 
the universal; but he began to make all kinds 
of science, for science deals with the particular. 

But to make science and discover and under- 
stand things he must have schools. These were 
given him by his priests, who were always in 
the beginning missionaries from some country 
that had already accepted the gospel. Let us 
admit that these colleges and universities were 



284 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

modeled after the style of those of Isocrates 
and Plato at Athens and the museums at Alex- 
andria; but "the university," we are told by 
the author of that article in "Chambers's En- 
cyclopedia," is, however, usually considered to 
have originated in the twelfth or thirteenth 
centuries, and to have grown out of the schools 
which, prior to that period, were attached to 
most of the cathedrals and monasteries, provid- 
ing the means of education both to churchmen 
and laymen and bringing together the few 
learned and scientific men who were to be found 
in Europe. Such an institute of the higher 
learning was at first called studium or studium 
generate. When a teacher of eminence ap- 
peared, such as Abelard, or Peter Lombard, or 
Irnerius at Bologna, a concourse of admiring 
students flocked round him, and the members of 
the studium generate formed themselves, for 
mutual support, into a corporation, on which 
the general name of universitas came to be be- 
stowed. In this way the oldest universities 
arose spontaneously. 

"The crowds drawn from every country of 
Europe to Paris, Bologna, and other educa- 
tional resorts, had first local immunities be- 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 285 

stowed on them for the encouragement of learn- 
ing, and to prevent them from removing else- 
where ; and the academical societies thus formed 
were by papal bulls and royal charters consti- 
tuted an integral part of the Church and State. 
''One great difference existed between the 
constitution of the two most important univer- 
sities of early times. In Paris the teachers 
alone constituted the corporation; in Bologna 
the university consisted of the students or 
scholars, who at first held the supreme power 
and appointed the academic officials. In this re- 
spect Bologna became the model of the subse- 
quent universities of Italy and the provincial 
universities of France, which were corporations 
of students; while the universities of Britain, 
Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia were like 
Paris, corporations of teachers, and the Span- 
ish universities occupied an intermediate po- 
sition. Along with a general resemblance, there 
was much difference in the constitution and 
character of the pre-Reformation universities, 
the form of each being the result of a combina- 
tion of various circumstances and ideas acting 
on an originally spontaneous convocation of 
teachers and scholars." 



286 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

Now, if any one is disposed to question the 
origin of the whole university system of Europe 
and America, let him look up the history of each 
institution. John Harvard was a preacher. 
Yale was founded "under the trusteeship of 
the ten principal ministers of the colony" 
of Connecticut. Princeton is Presbyterian; 
Brown, Baptist; Wesleyan, Methodist; Am- 
herst, Congregational. But it is useless to enu- 
merate the list. We have given enough to in- 
dicate that the Church sent the missionaries, 
the missionaries established monasteries and 
nunneries, and these in the pre-Eeformation 
period developed into the schools, colleges, 
and universities, until the post-Eeformation pe- 
riod, when the Churches began to establish col- 
leges and universities and help to build up a 
Christian government, which opened State uni- 
versities and a public school system ; so that all 
our educational regime is a by-product of mis- 
sions. 

Now let us go back to the fifteenth century 
and take a view of the map of the world. Asia 
was a mystery. Africa was an unknown coun- 
try. The Atlantic was the bugaboo of the world, 
though Europe, the last of the three conti- 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 287 

nents to awake, was beginning to wonder. She 
wanted to know. She began to dig in the earth 
and read the history of past ages. She began 
to question the heavens and doubt the decisions 
of Ptolemy. She began to want to see farther 
out into space. She began to doubt that the 
earth was flat and to believe that it was round. 
She began to question whether one would fall 
off if he got too near the edge. She believed 
that it would be possible to sail around the 
world, and doubted that if one went down 
around one side it would be impossible to get 
up the other. Her thought was in a ferment. 
She wanted to know. But we call attention to 
the fact that it was the people who had been de- 
veloped by the schools that had been estab- 
lished by the Church, carried first by the mis- 
sionaries, that wanted to know. 

To know, they must go. Bartolommeo Diaz, 
venturing farther upon the South Atlantic than 
any others before his time, finally rounded the 
Cape of Good Hope, though unaware of the fact, 
and took possession of ports of the coast of 
Africa in the name of his king, about the year 
1485-6. In 1497 Vasco da Gama, also of Portu- 
gal, fitted out a fleet of four vessels, manned 



288 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

by one hundred and sixty men, determined to 
find a southern route to India. Taking Diaz 
with him as an under officer, they left Lisbon 
on the 8th of July, 1497, and after encountering 
fearful storms, doubled the Cape of Good Hope 
the 19th of November, and after touching many 
places on the east coast of Africa, reached Cali- 
cut in India on the 20th of May, 1498. 

In the meantime Columbus had been brav- 
ing the storms of the Atlantic in an effort to 
discover a passage to India by sailing directly 
west, instead of which he made the greatest dis- 
covery the world had reserved, so familiar to 
every American school boy that it is unneces- 
sary to record here what happened in 1492. 
What Columbus failed to do, however, was re- 
served for Fernando de Magellan, who sailed 
on September 20, 1519, from San Lucar with 
five ships and two hundred and thirty-six men, 
struck the mouth of the La Plata, rounded the 
coast of Patagonia, discovered and sailed 
through the Strait of Magellan, and reached the 
Philippine Islands, where he lost his life in a 
fight with the chief on the 26th of April, 1521. 
His companions continued their voyage, reach- 
ing Spain on September 6, 1522, thus complet- 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 289 

ing the first voyage ever made around the 
world. 

It would be interesting to follow Captain 
Drake, who lost his life in his discovery of the 
Sandwich Islands as did Magellan in the Phil- 
ippines. It would be equally interesting to fol- 
low the Cabots, and Ross, and Cook, and Wiley, 
and hosts of other naval officers who rank 
among the explorers, all from countries devel- 
oped by the gospel, in vessels made by gospel- 
developed men, often discovering and revealing 
to the world! islands in the Pacific Ocean with 
missionaries already upon them. We do not 
overlook the fact that many of these discoveries 
were made by men who were far more inter- 
ested in discovering a passage to India for pur- 
poses of trade ; and hence the man who is writ- 
ing the history of the development of trade 
could reasonably claim that these discoveries 
are the results of the merchants rather than the 
missionaries. But a long view of the growth 
of trade will reveal the fact that these traders 
themselves are the result of a Christian rather 
than a pagan system of civilization, and hence, 
in a last analysis, are the result of the work 
of the missionaries. 

19 



290 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

My friend Oscar Huddleston, of the Philip- 
pines, a very large and handsome man, with 
a very large suit-case, and I were compelled 
to take a hack early one morning at Summer- 
field, Kan., while on laymen 's missionary work, 
to catch a motor car some seven miles distant. 
I had two suit-cases of my own. There was an 
insurance agent also in the hack, and we had 
difficulty in storing our luggage between the 
seats. 

"Pity that the cannibals hadn't eaten all 
the missionaries," the insurance agent re- 
marked. 

"In that case you would have been out of 
business," I answered. 

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Why, a world without a gospel means a 
world without insurance companies. Life and 
property are not protected where paganism 
reigns." 

"Oh! I guess the white man would have 
developed insurance companies, all right," he 
continued. 

"The white man never worked in that di- 
rection before he got the gospel," I answered. 
"Look up the early history of Europe." 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 291 

"Well, I would have run the risk," he re- 
plied. 

"Your business is to induce people not to 
take too much risk, isn't it?" I asked. 

"Sure," he replied. 

' ' Then, are you quite reasonable in this mat- 
ter?" I asked. 

"Well, I 'd run the risk on the cannibals 
and the missionaries," he replied. "I don't 
believe much in missions, anyhow." 

"Well, you do believe in government, do n't 
you?" 

"Yes." 

"And in education?" 

"Yes." 

"And in trade?" 

"Yes." 

"Well, you just look up" — and I went on 
to give him the contents of chapters one, two, 
and three of this book, which made him want 
to discuss other subjects. But I refused to let 
him do so until I gave him this parting shot: 

"My friend, if the missionaries had never 
carried the gospel to your ancestors and mine, 
instead of our riding in a spring carriage in 
Kansas, America might have remained a wil- 



292 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

derness until this day, and yon and I might 
have been squatting on our haunches gnawing 
a breakfast bone after the style of our unevan- 
gelized ancestors of Europe." 

"We then talked of other things until we 
reached the railroad station; but as we had 
been good-natured throughout the discussion, 
he came to me after we entered the car, and as 
he sat down beside me he said, 

"Say, you are the best-fortified missionary 
I ever met." 

"Perhaps your experience has n't been very 
extensive. ' ' 

"Well," he continued, "the difference be- 
tween you and me is that you believe in inspi- 
ration and conversion and. I do not." 

"Then you have not been converted?" I re- 
marked, interrogatively. 

"Not much," he replied. 

"Well, I have," I answered. 

"You think you have," he continued. 

"I know I have," I insisted. 

"How do you know you have?" he asked. 

"Let me explain in a round-about way," I 
answered. "You will admit that the brain is 
the highest type of physical creation, won't 
you?" 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 293 

"Yes." 

"Well, you will also admit that connected 
with the brain in some mysterious way there 
is a thinking man?" 

"Yes." 

"And that reason is the highest faculty (or 
state of the mind) of this thinker?" 

"Yes." 

"And that it is this reason that enables us 
to solve a problem in mathematics?" 

"Yes." 

"Now, if your reason was not developed, if 
you had not exercised your reason, you could 
not solve mathematical problems?" 

"Yes." 

"You will admit also that thinking relates 
us only with things, won't you?" 

"Yes." 

"Will you admit also that above thinking 
man we have another man, which we call the 
moral man?" 

"Surely." 

"Well, will you allow that that moral man 
has a conscience?" 

"Most assuredly." 

"Do you think that conscience may be de- 



294 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

veloped by exercise or dwarfed by lack of ex- 
erciser* 

''It certainly can." 

"Then it is just as much a faculty (or state 
of mind) as reason, isn't it!" 

"I hadn't thought of it in that way," he 
replied; "but, yes, I '11 admit it." 

"Then it holds the same relation to the 
moral man as reason does to the thinking man. 
It is the highest faculty." 

"Looking at it that way, yes." 

"But the moral man relates us to our fel- 
low-men," I went on, "just as the thinking man 
relates us to things." 

"So it seems." 

"Now, will you take another step and ad- 
mit that, besides having a thinking department 
and a moral department, we also have a re- 
ligious department to the mind?" 

"Some people have," he admitted. 

"Do not all peoples?" I asked. "Do you 
know of a people without some ^orm of religion 
or worship? I do not mean a person, but a 
people." 

"Yes, all peoples, so far as I know, have 
some form of religion." 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 295 

"Well, will you admit that faith is to the 
religions man what conscience is to the moral 
man and reason to the thinking man — the high- 
est state of the religions mind, or the highest 
faculty f" 

"Yes, I suppose so." 

"Then faith may be developed." 

"I suppose so." 

"But faith links us to God just as reason 
links us to things." 

"Yes, I presume so." 

"Then the way to solve religious problems 
is to set faith to work on them, just as we solve 
mathematical problems by setting reason to 
work on them." 

"So it would seem." 

"Now, if I had never studied mathematics 
would you have much respect for my opinions 
on geometry or trigonometry?" 

"Not much." 

"Well, that is just how I feel about your 
opinions on religion and conversion." 

"Say, old man, you 've got me," he ad- 
mitted. "I can't talk with you on theology." 

"Well, I think I could pay you the same 
compliment on insurance. And, frankly, I 



296 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

would not try to. I never try to pose as an 
authority on a subject that I do not know much 
about." And I parted from the man with a 
cordial handshake on his part as well as mine, 
and a bit wiser, I hope, on both missions and 
religion. 

Let us turn, now, to the exploration of 
Africa during the nineteenth century. From 
the time of Pharaoh Necho, about six hundred 
years before the Christian era, who, as Herod- 
otus tells us, sent an expedition down the Red 
Sea, with orders to sail around what was then 
considered an island, and which they succeeded 
in doing within the space of three years, until 
the beginning of the nineteenth century Africa 
was a closed continent. Something was learned 
of the shores both east and west, but little was 
known of the central plateau. 

"The discovery of diamond fields and coal 
mines in the Transvaal Republic," says Bayard 
Taylor, "and of a gold region to the north of 
Limpopo, promises to change the character of 
the country in a very short time. Indeed, these 
new sources of wealth have already given a 
fresh importance to South Africa and will 
hasten the complete exploration of the regions 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 297 

first penetrated by Moffat, Anderson, and Liv- 
ingstone. ' ' 

In a later chapter Bayard Taylor goes on to 
say: "The Protestant missionaries were really 
the first explorers of Sonth Africa, and to com- 
prehend how mnch those missionaries dared, in 
their zeal for the conversion of the native tribes, 
we must remember how the hostility between 
the Dutch Boers and the Hottentots, especially 
the Namaquas and Bushmen, had been con- 
firmed by generations of warfare. It was a 
settled, chronic enmity, and the suspicion which 
it engendered could only be overcome by slow 
degrees." 

Mr. Taylor goes on to rehearse in a book of 
three hundred and eleven pages, in the "Li- 
brary of Travel, ' ' the history of the opening up 
of South Africa, two hundred and fifty pages of 
which are culled from the writings of these 
three missionaries and their travels, and says: 
' ' The patience, zeal, and integrity of the Scotch 
character was admirably adapted to this ardu- 
ous work, and in the annals of missionary enter- 
prise there are no more deserving names than 
those of Campbell, Moffat, and Livingstone." 

In his work on Central Africa, after review- 



298 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

ing the explorations of the ancients as recorded 
by Herodotus and Eretosthenes, and the fur- 
ther explorations of the Portuguese during the 
eighteenth century, especially the Portuguese 
traveler Lacerda, he tells us that ' * two German 
missionaries, Krapp and Rebmann, who were 
stationed at Mombas, on the Zanzibar coast, 
learned, through their intercourse with the na- 
tives, of the existence of high mountains, cov- 
ered with snow, in the interior ; and in the year 
1850 [six years before Captain Burton, the first 
of the explorers of Central Africa, started on 
his expedition] the former succeeded in pene- 
trating far enough to attain a distant view of 
the great peak of Kilimandjaro, the height of 
which has since been estimated at twenty thou- 
sand feet above the sea. Although Dr. Krapp, 
in subsequent journeys, did not reach the moun- 
tain range, he established its existence, with 
the fact that the peaks of Kilimanjaro and Ke- 
nia rose above the limit of perpetual snow. He 
also brought reports of a large lake beyond the 
mountains, and waters flowing northward, which 
he conjectured to be the sources of the Nile." 
"By glancing at the map of the world in 
1810, ' ' says Dr. Barton, ' ' as printed in the story 



EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 299 

of the American Board, we see that when this 
board was organized all the interior of Africa 
and Australia is marked as unexplored. It is 
understood that practically nothing was then 
known with certainty about the interiors of 
China and Japan. " It is true that Marco Polo 
has given us his travels of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, but, though it was these travels that in- 
spired Vasca da Gama and Columbus to under- 
take to discover other easier passages to the 
Indies, the story itself was regarded as for the 
most pa>rt pure fiction. It was not until the. time 
of Abbe Hue — notwithstanding the travels of 
Xavier and the other fathers of the Roman 
Church — that a reliable record of the interior 
of China, Tibet, and Mongolia was given to 
Europe. 

Now, it would have to be admitted by a 
writer on explorations that the discovery of the 
world was largely directly due to the inordinate 
desire for wealth and trade on the part of the 
explorers. But when we come to inquire who 
these traders were we find them all coming from 
the Christian countries of Europe, and we are 
forced to the conclusion that trade is a result 
of the intelligence developed by the schools 



300 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

which were established by the Church, and that 
these explorations were but an indirect product 
of this same intelligence. 

But now come to the more direct testimony, 
and without hesitation we assert that the his- 
tory of the exploration of Southern and Central 
Africa can not be written without the credit be- 
ing given most largely to Moffat, Anderson, 
Campbell, Livingstone, Krapp, and Eebmann. 
When we turn to China we go at once to Hue 
and the other early Jesuit and Lazarist fathers, 
while for a detailed study of the empire we must 
go to the records and reports of the various 
mission stations that are scattered throughout 
the country. 



CHAPTER XX 

BY-PRODUCTS IN LANGUAGE AND 
LITERATURE 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century lit- 
tle effort had been made to rednce the lan- 
guages of the less-favored peoples to writing, 
and of course nothing had been done toward 
giving them a literature. The business of the 
missionary was to preach the gospel, but this 
he could not do until he had first learned their 
language or taught them his own. Merchants, 
travelers, and explorers had sometimes pre- 
ceded him, but they were interested, for the 
most part, only in learning enough of the lan- 
guage of the natives to serve the purposes of 
travel or trade, and one of the most interesting 
productions of trade throughout the world is 
the jargon that has been produced by the com- 
bination of the languages of the traders. 

At the head of all these jargons stands " pid- 
gin English,'' the combination of the two great- 
est business languages of the world, for I think 
it will be readily admitted that there are no two 

301 



302 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

peoples in the world who can surpass the Eng- 
lishman and the Chinese as traders. "What hap- 
pened, now, when they came together? The 
Englishman could not talk Chinese, nor could 
the Chinese speak English, and they were both 
too anxious to barter and earn to take time to 
translate and learn. Am I saying too much also 
when I add that in most cases they were not 
of such caliber that the making of a grammar 
or a dictionary was an easy matter? They 
were there to make money, and not to make 
books. 

As the Englishman was the stronger of the 
two, had ferreted out the paths of the sea, and 
come a long distance, he compelled the China- 
man to take the heavy end of the job, as all su- 
perior men do, making him learn the English 
words, while he consented to speak them after 
the Chinese idiom. For that is what "pidgin 
English" is — English spoken according to the 
Chinese idiom, for business (pidgin) purposes; 
and, as Dr. Barton has well said, ' ' ' Pidgin Eng- 
lish' seems quite good enough for their uses, 
and in fact is one of the mercantile contribu- 
tions to the philological museum of the world.' ' 
Nor will the Chinese accustomed to this jargon 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 303 

understand a word you say so long as you talk 
good English. 

I remember on my way to China, at the hotel 
at which we were stopping, one of the ladies 
wanted to give her children a bath before put- 
ting them to bed. She called the "boy," as 
all servants are called in China, no matter how 
old they may be, and said to him, 

' ' Get me some hot water, I want to give the 
children a bath." 

The boy looked dazed, but did not go. 

The lady repeated her order in a bit higher 
tone. 

The "boy" looked about him with an anx- 
ious, if not frightened, look, for he might lose 
his place if he could not understand his orders, 
but did not move. 

Again the lady gave her order, with perhaps 
just the least little bit of petulance; but the boy 
did not move. 

Just then her husband, who was a suave and 
quiet gentleman, and who had traveled in all 
countries and could make himself understood 
in all languages, entered the room. 

"Papa," said his wife, "I never saw such 
a stupid 'boy' as this one is. I have told him 



304 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

again and again to get me some hot water, so 
that I can give the children a bath; but he 
doesn't seem to understand a word I say." 

The husband turned quietly to the boy and 
said in an even tone, 

' ' Catchee one piecee bath, chop, chop ; ' ' and 
the "boy" went off like a shot from a gun. 

But the Chinaman does not have a high re- 
gard for the man who talks "pidgin English" 
to him. 

For years the East India and other com- 
panies had been trading with China, but it was 
not until Robert Morrison went out, in 1807, 
that a dictionary of the Chinese language was 
made that they could use. When Dr. Morrison 
found it was impossible for him to enter China 
he became the translator for the East India 
Company, in whose employ he remained for 
many years, putting both the Old and the New 
Testament into Chinese. 

But Dr. Morrison's work was only a begin- 
ning, and the world is inclined to overestimate 
the work of these beginners, as compared with 
their successors, because of the interest that al- 
ways attaches to first things. Dr. S. Wells Wil- 
liams made a very much better dictionary and 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 305 

prepared a book, "The Middle Kingdom," 
which has revealed China to the English-speak- 
ing peoples, while Dr. James Legge performed 
the herculean task of putting all the Chinese 
classics into English, thus giving ns, in onr own 
language, the best products of all Chinese lit- 
erary work. These, with the works of Chal- 
mers, Edkins, Martin, Smith, and other mission- 
aries, have given us a reasonably clear idea of 
the philological, sociological, political, and lit- 
erary character of the Chinese people. While 
for studying the language, it will be admitted 
that Mateer has given us the best of all helps. 

"How much the world owes to the philo- 
logical achievements of the missionaries, ' ' says 
Dr. Barton, "could hardly be recorded in a 
single volume, even of large proportions. They 
have made a far greater contribution to this 
subject than all other students of language 
combined. 

"Commissioner Sir H. H. Johnston, of 
British Central Africa, emphasizes the huge 
debt that philologists owe to the labors of mis- 
sionaries in Africa. He reports that nearly two 
hundred African languages and dialects have 
been illustrated by grammars, dictionaries, vo- 
20 



306 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

cabularies, and Bible translations ; that many of 
these tongues were on the point of extinction, 
and some have since become extinct; and that 
we owe all the knowledge we have of them to 
the intervention of the missionaries, 

' ' When we turn to the Pacific Islands we find 
that our knowledge of the many languages 
spoken there is due almost, if not wholly, to 
the missionaries. As we go over the groups, 
the Sandwich Islands, Ponape, the Mortlocks, 
the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, as well as the 
more remote, the Fiji, the New Hebrides, and 
the Solomon Islands, we can not but be im- 
pressed with the value of the missionaries' 
contribution to the world's knowledge by their 
discovery of the languages spoken by these 
peoples and the embodying of the same in an 
orderly literature. It seems but yesterday that 
Dr. Hiram Bingham was with us, who, together 
with Mrs. Bingham, gave to the Gilbert Island- 
ers their own tongue, with a grammar and dic- 
tionary, embodying it in hymns, a New Testa- 
ment, a Bible dictionary, and other books. 

' ' Starting with William Carey in India, who 
is credited with translating the Bible in whole 
or in part into twenty-four Indian languages 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 307 

and dialects, until the present time, the mission- 
aries have been searching out the unknown 
tongues spoken by that great polyglot people in 
order to put them in permanent form as the 
channel through which Christian truth may be 
conveyed. 

"In a word, wherever missionaries have 
gone they have been students of the vernacular 
before they were preachers of the gospel; and 
they have been architects of grammars, vocabu- 
laries, and lexicons, and creators of a Christian 
literature in the form of Bible translations be- 
fore they erected churches. 

"If missionaries had not done this work, 
who would have undertaken it? It could not 
have been expected that independent students 
of philology would have been content to bury 
themselves for a lifetime in the center of Africa 
or upon an island in the midst of the Pacific 
or in the interior of China,, simply for the pur- 
pose of giving to the world a correct knowledge 
of the vernacular spoken by the people in those 
different regions. The sacrifice demanded 
would have been too great for the promised re- 
ward. No one would expect that the merchants 
who touched but the fringes of the great East- 



308 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

ern countries would give much attention to the 
niceties of the language of the people with 
whom they traded. 'Pidgin English' seems 
quite good enough for their uses, and in fact is 
one of the mercantile contributions to the philo- 
logical museum of the world. 

"It is only the missionaries, as a class, who 
have had a motive strong and permanent 
enough to carry men and women of the highest 
intelligence and training into the uttermost 
parts of the earth and there hold them at the 
task of language study until it eventuated in an 
extensive and orderly literature. 

' ' Over four hundred effective and living ver- 
sions of the Bible, translated for the most part 
by missionaries and native co-workers trained 
by them, are now in use. These have stood the 
test of scientific scrutiny and are the crowning 
proof of the thoroughness with which the chief 
languages of Africa and the East have been 
mastered by the missionaries. 

"It is not claimed that the missionaries have 
done extensive work in comparative philology. 
Their task has been to make themselves masters 
of one, two, or, as in the case of Dr. Elias Riggs, 
of Turkey, of several languages, not for the 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 309 

purpose of comparing one with another, but 
solely for the purpose of coming into the closest 
relations with those to whom the conquered lan- 
guage was a household tongue. Philologists of 
the "West have made the accurate preliminary 
work of these pioneers the field for their own 
investigations and comparisons. 

"The literary work of the missionaries has 
introduced into all of these countries the mod- 
ern art of printing and has built up extensive 
printing establishments in all the Eastern cen- 
ters of population which are producing millions 
of pages annually of vernacular literature. 
This includes not only the Bible in whole or in 
part, but all kinds of educational books, besides 
translations and original productions, religious, 
scientific, and literary, for the general enlight- 
enment of all classes. 

"This work has now made such progress 
that many presses which began under the direc- 
tion of missionaries and were aided with funds 
from the missionary societies are now owned 
and conducted by native firms. Much of the 
publication work of the missionaries themselves 
in some countries, like Japan and India, is now 
done entirely by native companies. 



310 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

"But we have digressed from philological 
contributions to literary output, which is never- 
theless a part of the same subject. It is through 
this extensive output that comparative philol- 
ogy is kept up to date and that the rapid 
changes taking place in so many of the Eastern 
languages are traced. This study is materially 
aided by the great number of vernacular peri- 
odicals published upon mission presses and 
forced to keep up with the modern linguistic 
trend in order to command the attention of their 
clientele. Educated native scholars are now 
carrying on this work. 

"The missionaries are following closely, as 
are the native scholars, the linguistic changes 
that are taking place in languages spoken by 
peoples that are making rapid progress in gen- 
eral education, like the Bulgarian, the Arme- 
nian, and Turkish, some of the languages of 
India, the Chinese, and the Japanese. It is the 
business of the missionaiy to keep close watch 
of all literary changes in order that he may put 
his message into such form that it will command 
respectful hearing. 

" If it were possible to bring together in one 
place samples of all the grammars, dictionaries, 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 311 

hymn books, Bibles, school books, and works of 
general literature of every kind and from all 
parts of the world which have been written or 
translated during the last century by missiona- 
ries or under their supervision, it would make 
one of the most complete exhibits of the lan- 
guages and dialects spoken by more than five- 
sixths of the people of the world that could be 
produced. On the other hand, if there could be 
collected all that has been done in this direction 
by others than missionaries, or by those work- 
ing with them, we would find but a meager ex- 
hibit; showing conclusively how indebted we 
have been and yet are to the missionaries for 
their persistent, scholarly, and accurate endeav- 
ors along philological and literary lines. While 
the work in this respect has been unquestionably 
missionary, it has at the same time been highly 
scientific; and while it has contributed directly 
to the success of missionary work, it has added 
enormously to the philological knowledge of the 
world. 

' ' The results of this labor are now available 
for the Church to employ in reaching the intel- 
lects as well as the hearts of the people of the 
East." 



CHAPTER XXI 

BY-PRODUCTS IN NON-CHRISTIAN 
SYSTEMS 

While giving a series of lectures recently at 
the Boston University on ' ' The By-Products of 
Missions," Sir Wilfred Grenfel was delivering 
a similar series at Harvard on ' ' The Adventure 
of Life. ' ' I af terwards met him, and in talking 
over the matter he asked me what I meant hy 
the "by-products of missions." I called his 
attention in a brief way to the contents of the 
foregoing chapters, when he exclaimed: 

"Why, yes ; I had never thought of it in that 
way before. The fact is that all our civilization 
and progress, traced back to a last analysis, is 
the result of the gospel of Jesus Christ as car- 
ried by the missionaries!" I wonder if there 
is any one who would feel disposed to deny that 
statement. 

For some time I had been thinking of the 
changes that had been brought about in the non- 
Christian religious systems by the influence of 

312 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 313 

the gospel, and while attending the ' ' Orient in 
Providence" I had an opportunity to talk the 
matter over with an eminent Japanese pro- 
fessor. 

"What influence, if any," I asked him, "is 
Christianity having on the native religions of 
Japan?" 

"It is changing them entirely," he an- 
swered. 

1 ' Can you point out any definite changes that 
are being brought about?" I inquired further; 
"for there are a great many people who are 
ready to make assertions, but the world wants 
definite facts." 

"Well," he answered, "take, for instance, 
the Young Men's Buddhist Association. This 
has been established since the Young Men's 
Christian Association went to Japan, and is 
modeled after the same pattern. It gives lec- 
tures, holds study classes, has a gymnasium and 
reading-rooms, as well as methods for enter- 
taining the young men after the style of its 
Christian prototype. It never had anything 
of that kind before, indeed Buddhism never 
thought of making any effort for the saving of 
the young men by gathering them off the street 



314 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

until it learned it from the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association." 

* ' That is an important change, ' ' I admitted. 
"You are sure that it is the result of the sug- 
gestion and influence of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association?" 

" "Where else could it have come from!" he 
asked. "No Buddhist would deny that they 
developed it as a result of seeing the work of 
the Young Men's Christian Association. But 
that is not the only change," he continued, 
"that has come to Japanese Buddhism as a 
result of Christian influence and Christian ex- 
ample. ' ' 

' ' Ah, indeed ! " I exclaimed. 

"Before the opening of Christian schools 
the Buddhists never thought of opening schools 
for the instruction of the children of their fol- 
lowers." 

"And have they schools now that correspond 
to our Church schools?" I inquired; for this 
was a suggestion of change which I had never 
thought of before. 

"They not only have schools for men," he 
answered, "but schools for women and girls 
as well ; and these schools are modeled after the 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 315 

style of our own. They teach the leading tenets 
of Buddhism outside of the regular course of 
study, just as our schools aim to instil into the 
minds of the children the great principles of 
the gospel. Indeed, I regard that as one of 
the greatest social influences that the gospel 
has had in Japan. It is an effort on the part 
of the Buddhists to put the new wine of the 
gospel into the old skins of Buddhism." 

To me this was very interesting, more so, 
perhaps, because I had been thinking so long 
upon this subject; but I do not see how it can 
fail to interest any one as a sidelight in the illu- 
mination of the world. 

"And are there any other results of this 
character?" I inquired. 

' ' Many of them, ' ' he ans wered. ' ' The Bud- 
dhists are now publishing newspapers and mag- 
azines similar to those of the Church in Amer- 
ica, and these are having a large influence upon 
the people — a wider influence, though not per- 
haps as deep and lasting as that of the schools. 
It is simply an adoption of Christian educa- 
tional methods to keep their people with them. 
These newspapers and magazines are not of a 
bad type and are doing a good deal toward the 



316 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

enlightenment of the people. They furnish 
them with something to read, and bind them 
together into a kind of a social commnnity. ' ' 

"I was not aware," I said, "that the Bud- 
dhists had gone so far in adopting our methods. 
Perhaps they have taken others?" 

"Indeed they have," he answered. "They 
now have Sunday schools similar to our own, 
in which they sing hymns and play on organs 
not very unlike those which we use in our 
churches. They have established orphanages, 
in which they rescue children and care for them 
much as we do in ours. They have hospitals, 
where they care for the sick and thus win for 
themselves a large number of adherents that 
they could get in no other way. They have even 
established women's societies, which are under- 
taking to do for the women of Japan what our 
own women's societies are doing for the women 
of Christian lands." 

From what my Japanese friend told me it 
will be seen that Buddhism in Japan, if not in 
other countries, has been materially altered by 
its contact with Christianity. Has the reverse 
been true f Who can tell of anything that Chris- 
tianity has adopted from Buddhism? Is there 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 317 

mot some significance in this for those esoteric 
Buddhists who have never seen Buddhism in 
the countries where it has had its opportunity 
for centuries? 

"And may I ask, ' ' I went on, l ' if there have 
been changes in the customs of the Shintoists 
similar to those you have just described in Bud- 
dhism?" 

"I have not tried to tell of all the changes 
in Buddhism," he answered, " because those 
which have come to one religion have come also 
to the other, and what I shall now speak of as 
peculiar to Shintoism might just as well have 
been described in connection with Buddhism. 
In Japan we have had our national shortcom- 
ings, peculiar to all non-Christian peoples. 
Some of these are connected with our marriage, 
and others with our funeral ceremonies. In- 
deed, under the old regime the ceremonies con- 
nected with both marriage and death were 
either very loose or very uncertain. Some men 
would take a wife with but very little ceremony, 
and get rid of her with even less. One of the 
strict rules of the Church was that a man should 
take but one wife; she should be given to him 
at the altar, and except in an extreme case, 



318 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

lie might not put her away. This appealed to 
the better element of the Japanese, and it is not 
too much to say that the faithful Buddhists and 
Shintoists were among these better people. " 

"And so they adopted the marriage cere- 
mony, did they?" I inquired. 

"They did," he replied. "It is not uncom- 
mon at the great Shinto temple, Hibiya Dai 
Jingu, in Tokyo, to see marriages being sol- 
emnized, and it is worthy of note that the 
priests will never perform a marriage cere- 
mony at this temple for less than fifteen yen, 
so that they are making it a source of income 
for the temple." 

"And do they take part in funeral ceremo- 
nies as well?" I asked; for he had spoken of 
both marriages and funerals. 

"Before the coming of Christianity to Ja- 
pan," he answered, "neither the Buddhists nor 
the Shintoists would have anything to do with 
funerals or marriages. But they soon found 
that these were the two occasions when the 
heart was most susceptible to influence, and 
when people were most in need of sympathy and 
comfort. And taking their cue from the Chris- 
tians, they conduct the funeral ceremonies of 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 319 

their dead just as they take part in the wed- 
dings, but they will not officiate at a funeral any 
more than at a wedding without remuneration. 
They charge for conducting a funeral according 
to the number of priests they furnish, and, of 
course, according to the length of the family's 
purse or their reputation for wealth in the com- 
munity. ' ' 

In China, so far as I have seen, little if any 
influence has been brought to bear upon Bud- 
dhism that has effected any change. China is 
a large place; the people are a great people, 
firmly bound to their customs, and it is not 
likely that these religious changes will appear 
at an early date among them. 

The same can not be said of India. I was 
talking with a noted Hindoo professor, who 
was a delegate to some religious meeting in 
America not long since, and I put the same 
question to him that I did to my Japanese 
friend. 

"What changes, if any, have been brought 
about in Hindooism by the influence of the gos- 
pel?" 

"Among the greatest changes," he an- 
swered, "outside of the regular preaching to 



320 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

the people, are the development of such soci- 
eties as the Brahma Samaj and the Aryan Sa- 
maj, which, though they are strictly Hindoo— 
that is, in no way connected with the Church — * 
are yet believing in a God and preaching a doc- 
trine that seem to be learned more from the 
Bible than from any other source.' ■ 

I began looking up the matter, and I was 
not surprised to find that the Brahma Samaj 
is a theistic communion which owes its origin 
to Eaja Earn Mohan Eai, who was born in the 
district of Bordwan in 1772. He mastered the 
Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian languages at an 
early age, was impressed with the fallacies of 
the religious worship of his countrymen, studied 
the Hindu Shastras, the Koran, and the Bible, 
gave up polytheistic worship as false, and at 
first taught the principles of monotheism as 
found in the ancient Upanishads of the Vedas, 
though most likely influenced more by the mono- 
theism of the Bible. 

In 1816 he established a society consisting 
only of Hindus, in which texts from the Vedas 
were recited and theistic hymns were chanted. 
"In 1830 he organized a society for prayer- 
meetings, which may be considered as the foun- 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 321 

dation of the present Brahma Samaj," and one 
need not go far to find the example and the in- 
spiration which led him to start a prayer-meet- 
ing. While the society at first admitted only 
Hindns, when they dedicated their first build- 
ing, we are told that "it was a place of public 
meeting for all sorts and descriptions of peo- 
ple, without distinction, who shall behave in an 
orderly, sober, and religious manner." 

Those who are interested in the trust-deed 
of the building will find it under the "Brahma 
Samaj" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica," 
where we are told that "the new faith at this 
period held to the Yedas as its basis. The 
founder, Earn Mohan Bai, soon after left India 
for England, where he died in 1835." The so- 
ciety maintained a bare existence till 1841, when 
Babu Debendra Nath Tagore, of Calcutta, took 
it up, gave it a printing-press, established a 
paper, "to which the Bengali language now 
owes much for its strength and elegance." 
About the year 1850 some of the followers dis- 
covered that the greater part of the Vedas is 
polytheistic, and a schism took place. "Be- 
tween 1847 and 1850 branch societies were 
formed in different parts of India, especially in 



322 SOME BY-PRODUCTS OF MISSIONS 

• Bengal, and the new Church made rapid prog- 
ress, ' ' says the * ' Britannica, " ' * for which it was 
largely indebted to the spread of English edu- 
cation and the labors of the Christian mission- 
aries." 

It is not necessary to follow them further in 
their progress except to say that later, about 
1860, the younger Brahmans, headed by Babu 
Kesab Chandra Sen, tried to carry their reli- 
gious theories into practice by excluding all 
idolatrous rites from their social and domestic 
ceremonies, and by rejecting the distinction of 
caste altogether." This was a definite charac- 
teristic of the Church from the beginning; it 
is not improbable that it was from this source 
that Kesab Chandra Sen got his inspiration. 
This caused the schism to widen into a "visible 
separation," and the two parties were known 
thereafter as the progressives and the conserv- 
atives. The former have made considerable 
progress. "They have built a church in Cal- 
cutta which is crowded every Sunday evening, 
and they encourage the establishment of branch 
Samajes in different parts of the country." 

After the death of Kesab Chandra Sen the 
leadership of the sect was taken up by Moo- 



NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS 323 

zoomdar, whose "Oriental Christ" and other 
books on the doctrines of the Brahma Samaj 
are an exhibition of a deep piety which only an 
Oriental — and I was about to add, a Hindu- 
could set forth. But not simply a Hindu of the 
Hindus, but a Hindu who has been touched, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, by the 
Spirit of the Master. 



MAR 25 1912 



